Electoral heat: Is Kerala’s tradition unlikely to be broken this time either?

SOUTHERN SKIES || With summer temperatures crossing record levels in Kerala, the tu tu main main tirade is also getting fiery in the run-up to the polls notified for April 26

People walk past the posters of Congress candidate Shashi Tharoor and BJP candidate Rajeev Chandrasekhar pasted on a wall, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in Thiruvananthapuram.:Sourced by the Telegraph

M.G. Radhakrishnan, TT,  25.03.24 : Although Kerala has only 20 Lok Sabha seats, all three major national parties — the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) — have exceptionally high stakes in the state in the upcoming parliamentary election. Kerala gave the highest number of seats (19) to the Congress in the 2019 election, including Rahul Gandhi’s Wayanad, from where he is contesting again. The CPI(M) also expects maximum seats from the state, especially when it is struggling to retain its status as a national party. The BJP is leaving no stone unturned to break its dismal record of never having won a single seat in the state, which has witnessed unprecedented four visits by Prime Minister Narendra Modi since January. Kerala also bares one of the biggest chinks in the armour of the Opposition’s INDIA coalition: Rahul Gandhi’s primary opponent in Wayanad is Annie Raja, national executive member of the Communist Party of India and the wife of D. Raja, the CPI’s general-secretary. This was the reason why the Left parties boycotted the concluding session of Rahul Gandhi’s 63-day-old Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Mumbai.

The biggest issue to watch out for in the upcoming Lok Sabha election in Kerala is whether there will be a break in the dominant tradition of contradictory preferences in polls held for the Lok Sabha and the state assembly. Even when it overwhelmingly votes for the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front in the assembly elections, Kerala’s electorate has often preferred the Congress-led United Democratic Front for the Lok Sabha. Just two years after the UDF swept 19 of the 20 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, the LDF achieved a stunning victory in the assembly polls and returned to power for a successive second term for the first time ever. In the 11 Lok Sabha elections held in Kerala since 1980, the UDF has come up on top in 8 and the LDF in 2. Only once — in 1996 — did both rival fronts share the seats equally, bagging 10 each. The BJP drew a blank in every election, even though the Indian Federal Democratic Party, a constituent in the National Democratic Alliance, won a seat in 2004.

If the various opinion polls conducted until now are any indication, Kerala’s tradition is unlikely to be broken this time either. The only suspense is whether the LDF can improve on its pathetic performance in 2019 when it had to be content with just a single seat. It will be no mean achievement if it does so because of the perceived anti-incumbency sentiments across the state against the state government. The minority consolidation behind the UDF is expected to be less this time than before. The LDF’s high decibel campaign against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is being done with the Muslim vote in mind.

The LDF’s 2019 debacle was attributed to the massive movement led separately by the Congress and the BJP against the government implementing the Supreme Court order permitting women of menstrual age to enter the Sabarimala shrine.

UDF leaders are claiming of ma­king a clean sweep, grabbing all 20 seats this time. They have fielded K.C. Venugopal, the Congress gener­al-secretary and Rahul Gandhi’s closest confidant, from Alappuz­ha, the lone seat it lost to the LDF in 2019. Venugopal, who was reluctant to contest, had won from Alappuzha twice before and is now taking on the CPI(M)’s sitting member, A.M. Ariff. The UDF’s other star candidates are the Congress’s Shashi Tharoor (Thiruvananthapuram) and the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president, K. Sudhakaran (Kannur).

The LDF, keen to recover from last time’s drubbing, has fielded senior leaders. Among them are a Politburo member and four Central Committee members from the CPI(M). While the Politburo member, A. Vijayaraghavan, has been fielded from Palakkad, Central Committee members and former state ministers like Thomas Isaac, Elamaram Kareem, K.K. Shailaja, who was a star during the state’s much-acclaimed management of Covid-19, and K. Radhakrishnan, the current minister for Devaswoms affairs, are contesting from Pathanamthitta, Kozhikode, Vadakara and Alathur, respectively.

The BJP has also fielded heavyweights, such as the Union minister of state, Rajeev Chandrasekhar (Thiruvananthapuram), the film star, Suresh Gopi (Thrissur), the Union minister of state for external affairs, V. Muraleedharan (Attingal), and Anil K. Antony (Pathanamthitta), the son of the Congress stalwart, A.K. Antony. In 2019, except in Thiruvananthapuram where it came second, NDA candidates were relegated to the third position in every seat. But even though the NDA is unlikely to make any impact this time, the UDF and the LDF are locked in a feverish spat to prove which is more anti-BJP as the campaign heats up. They accuse each other of striking secret deals with the BJP. Clearly, the eye is on the minorities who form about 45% of the state’s population.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan kicked off the campaign in Wayanad by slamming Rahul Gandhi for coming to Kerala and fighting the LDF instead of taking on the BJP in its northern bastions. “What more proof is needed for Congress-BJP links?” he asked. “Who can trust the Congress? Today’s Congress leaders are tomorrow’s BJP leaders,” sniped M.V. Govindan, the CPI(M) state secretary. The son and daughter of two of Kerala’s tallest Congress leaders have crossed over to the saffron camp. In early March, Padmaja Venugopal, daughter of K. Karunakaran, the late Congress leader and four-time chief minister, joined the BJP. Anil Antony, the son of A.K. Antony, a three-time Congress chief minister and former Union defence minister, joined the BJP last April and, as mentioned earlier, is now its candidate.

The Congress has hit back, accusing the Central agencies of slowing down investigations into the corruption cases against the CPI(M) due to the latter’s tacit deals with the BJP. It alleged that the BJP candidate and technology entrepreneur, Chandrasekhar, and E.P. Jayarajan, the LDF convenor and a member of the CPI(M) Central Committee, have mutual business links. The Opposition leader, V.D. Satheesan, stated that Niraamaya Retreats Vaidekam, an ayurveda resort in Kannur, is a joint project between the two leaders. Even though Jayarajan dismissed the claim, he admitted that his wife and son are shareholders and are on the board of directors in the resort. Originally named Vaidekam Ayurveda Village, its management was taken over last year by Niraamaya Wellness Retreats, which runs multiple properties and is linked to the Bengaluru-based business group, Jupiter Capital, founded by Chandrasekhar in 2005. After the controversy broke out, Jayarajan held that he was unaware that Niraamaya was linked to Chandrasekhar who, in turn, denied having ever met the Marxist leader. Satheesan also alleged that the income tax department’s

investigation into the resort was stalled after Niraamaya took over its management.

At the same time, the BJP’s refrain this time is to accuse the LDF and the UDF of staging a fake war with ‘gusthi in Kerala and dosti in Delhi’. With summer temperatures crossing record levels in Kerala, the tu tu main main tirade is also getting fiery in the run-up to the polls notified for April 26.

M.G. Radhakrishnan, a senior journalist based in Thiruvananthapuram, has worked with various print and electronic media organisations