Congress Nominates Former MP Muhammad Hamdullah Sayeed For Lakshadweep (image-X/HamdullaSayeed)
Reserved for Scheduled Tribes (STs), the Lok Sabha constituency of Lakshadweep covers the entire area of the Union Territory. Formerly part of a constituency in the Malabar District, an MP was directly elected in 1967. Previously, the President of India would appoint the MP. The first MP, K. Nalla Koya Thangal, from the Indian National Congress (INC), served from 1957 to 1967.
In the first election held in Lakshadweep in 1967, PM Sayeed won as an independent candidate. In the next election, Sayeed again won, this time on a Congress ticket. Sayeed went on to maintain his winning streak in the next eight elections. In the 2009 elections, Sayeed’s son, Muhammad Hamdulla Sayeed, who was 26 then, secured the seat, making him the youngest MP in the 15th Lok Sabha.
But before he could replicate his father’s victory streak, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidate Mohammad Faizal Padippura won the seat with 50 percent of votes. In the 2009 elections, Hamdullah Sayeed was defeated by 823 votes, a margin of 1.8 percent. Four years later, Faizal was disqualified as a Lok Sabha member after he and four others were sentenced to ten years in an attempted murder case of a Congress activist in 2009. However, his membership was restored after the Kerala High Court suspended his conviction.
Interestingly, BJP candidate Abdul Khader Haji secured the lowest votes (125) in the 2019 elections.
Keeping this in view and the family history of the Sayeed’s in the union territory, Congress has once again nominated Muhammed Hamdullaha Sayeed from Lakshadweep.
As of 2014, Lakshadweep is the smallest Lok Sabha constituency in India based on the number of voters. The UT also has 96 percent Muslim voters, as per the 2011 census. The archipelago recently made news as celebrities promoted it as a tourism spot, an alternative to the Maldives amid the India-Maldives conflict.
