With election to the Lok Sabha from the State is hardly a fortnight away, campaigning has reached a feverish pitch in Kerala. On Monday, Narendra Modi will make a whirlwind tour to the State, becoming the first Prime Minister visiting Kerala to extend Vishu Greetings to the people.
The ruling CPI(M) has fielded the country’s two most intelligent and scholarly leaders, Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury to take on Modi. The CPI(M) commissars, popularly known as “carrot and beetroot” of Indian politics are coming with a mission to win in as many seats as possible as it is important for the party to have a reasonable number of MPs to remain in reckoning as a national party. The duo is likely to tour all the 19 constituencies except Wayanad from where Congress scion Rahul Gandhi is seeking reelection.
Though the initial phase of the election campaign saw the LDF (led by the CPI(M)) and the INDI alliance led by the Congress engaged in a straight bout, things have taken a change and the BJP has emerged as a strong contender in Thiruvananthapuram, Pathanamthitta, Thrissur and Kasaragod. Sasi Tharoor, the Congress candidate from Thiruvananthapuram who had hoped for a smooth sailing has lost his initial advantage as BJP’s Rajeev Chandrasekhar derailed the glamour boy’s claims by exposing the fact that the capital city of Kerla has not been benefitted during his 15 years long tenure as MP.
“Sasi Tharoor has become a butt of jokes with his claims that it was he who taught Gautam Adani the significance of Vizhinjam Container Terminal. There were instances when Tharoor was drive away by his own partymen when he went to campaign,” said Valsa Mony senior editor, Kala Kaumudi, a popular Malayalam political weekly.
According to Valsa, grand daughter of Sukumaran, the founder of Kerala Kaumudi, the BJP was not in contention all these years because of the inefficiency of the Kerala leadership of the party. The average voter in the State is fed up of the corruption indulged in by the CPI(M) while the popularity of Congress has reached a nadir because of the party’s infighting and policy of appeasement, said Valsa.
But P Rajan, author and veteran editor of Mathrubhumi said he was doubtful of the BJP winning even a single seat in the hustings. “If the Hindutva party manages third position in at least three constituencies, that itself is an achievement,” said Rajan who too blamed the incapability of the State leadership of the BJP.
The PDP led by Abdul Nazar Madani, an Islamic zealot who was in jail for years in connection with the 1996 serial blasts that killed hundreds of people in Coimbatore announced on Friday that his party would vote for the CPI(M)-led front in the Lok Sabha election. A bomb blast at Panoor which claimed the life of a CPI(M) youth has put the Marxists in a spot. All those who were arrested in connection with the blast were CPI(M) activists and the police has been quoted as saying that the blast occurred while the bombs were being manufactured.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in his speeches in election campaigns caution the voters that if Narendra Modi wins this election, there would not be any more elections in future. This is what his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal was telling during the 2019 general election. On Saturday, the CPI(M) issued a stern warning to media houses who through their surveys had forecast that the Congress-led front would majority of the seats in Kerala while the CPI(M) would be relegated to the background.
