The BJP has asserted that it got all its party votes in Piravom, though it “lost” the votes of its sympathisers as the “fight had narrowed down to the two leading fronts”.
BJP candidate K.R. Rajagopal polled 3,241 votes in the bypoll, 993 less than the 4,234 votes it got in 2011.
The meetings of the party state and district committees in the coming days will look into the party’s poll report, that will be finalised by the election committee, sources said.
The BJP numbers went down even as nearly 20,000 more votes were polled in Piravom this time compared to the last election. Both the UDF and the LDF succeeded in improving their poll tally from that of 2011.
BJP state secretary A.N. Radhakrishnan said it fought against two political fronts that had ruled the state one after the other. “We had our limitations when electioneering was done at the booth-level by ministers of the UDF and ex-ministers of the LDF. Still, we ensured our party got votes.”
He said the BJP did not lose votes en bloc in any region. “We lost 10 to 15 votes in all the booths and those were mainly of our sympathisers.”