Chandy Oommen, the son of late Congress stalwart Oommen Chandy, retained the Puthuppally assembly constituency in Kerala by a margin of over 36,000 votes in the bypoll on Friday.
The Opposition Congress-UDF candidate gained a clear edge since the initial round, his nearest rival and ruling LDF candidate Jaick C Thomas could never gain a lead in any rounds. Chandy Oommen could well surpass his father’s record of margin of 33,255 votes in the constituency, which the late Congress leader represented Puthuppally in the state assembly for more than five decades.
The voting for the seat, left vacant by the demise of Oommen Chandy, was held on September 5.
Who is Chandy Oommen?
1. Born in March 1986 in Puthuppally, Kottayam district, Chandy Oommen completed his schooling at Loyola School in 1992 and BA Honours and MA (history) from the prestigious St Stephen’s College, New Delhi.
2. He was the president of the college students’ union there between 2006 and 2007. After his post-graduation, Chandy completed his LLB from Delhi University and LLM in constitutional law at Christ University in Bengaluru in 2015–16.
3. After completing a summer course at the London School of Economics in 2016, Chandy Oommen completed his LLM criminology at the National Law University, New Delhi. He is a practising lawyer and serves as adjunct faculty at Amity University and Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, Delhi.
4. Chandy Oommen, 37, has been part of the Congress’s organisational structure for since his college days. Currently, he is the chairman of the Youth Congress’s national outreach cell and a member of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC).
5. Chandy Oommen was a state secretary of the Youth Congress in 2013. He had also participated in the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. But he had to skip the padyatra midway due to his father’s illness.
