Nilambur, June 19 (IANS) At the close of polling for the Nilambur Assembly by-election on Thursday, the turnout was 73.22 per cent — down from 76.31 per cent recorded during the 2024 Assembly polls.

Counting of votes will be taken up at 8 a.m on Monday and in around two hours, the clear trends will emerge, an official said.

There are 2,32,381 votes in the constituency, which includes 1,13,613 males, 1,18,760 females, and eight transgender voters and 10 candidates was in the fray.

No sooner did the voting got over at 6 p.m, three of the candidates have claimed that they would be winning.

Aryadan Shoukath of the Congress has predicted that he will win with a record victory margin and if his prediction turns out to be true than he will have to win with a margin of over 21,620 votes which his father won in 2001, which presently is the biggest victory margin at Nilambur starting from 1965.

Likewise M. Swaraj , a former CPI-M legislator said he will win with a impressive margin and not to be left behind was P.V.Anvar , the man responsible for this by-election.

Anvar who won as a Left independent candidate , first in 2016 and then repeated it again in 2021, but quit in January after differences of opinion surfaced with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

“I am going to win with a margin of 30,000 votes,” said Anvar.

Mohan George of the BJP who took the party membership after his candidature was announced was the realistic among the frontline candidates when he said “the BJP will do very well”.

At the 2021 polls, the BJP candidate was able to manage just 8,595 votes only.

Despite the rains on Thursday morning, voters were queuing up in front of the 263 polling booths in Nilambur constituency.

With more than 50 additional polling booths up from 2021, at most places the voting got over at the designated time of 6 p.m.

–IANS

sg/pgh