Peravoor (Kannur): Be it on social media or on the ground, it is the strong presence of women supporters that stands out in the election campaign of K.K. Shailaja, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate from Kannur district’s Peravoor.
At a media interaction on the banks of the Iritty River, 45 km from Kannur city, Saturday, Shailaja was approached by a visitor from southern Kerala’s Kollam who had been waiting for more than two hours. When Shailaja grasped her hands, the woman gushed, exclaiming, “I wanted to meet you for a very long time!”
Fielded from the sitting Congress MLA and Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee President Sunny Joseph’s seat, Shailaja, as well as her supporters, hope that this popularity will bring them a win.
The CPI(M) has maintained that Shailaja is a strong candidate and the only right choice to wrest the seat away from the Congress, which has traditionally been winning from the area. But her candidature is being viewed by some as a move to sideline her.
Acclaimed for her leadership during the Nipah and COVID-19 crises, K.K. Shailaja, Kerala’s ex-health minister, was dropped from the state cabinet in 2021. The move had come despite her record-breaking victory margin of over 60,000 votes in Mattannur, a CPI(M) stronghold in the 2021 assembly elections.
However, speaking to ThePrint, Shailaja explained that her candidature in Peravoor aligns with the CPI(M)’s policy of not fielding leaders for consecutive terms from its strongholds. She noted that the decision to field Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan from his constituency, Dharmadom, another party stronghold in Kannur, is an exception.
Chosen as a candidate for the third time, Shailaja is expected to reclaim Peravoor, where she was born.
The Left candidate in Mattannur, meanwhile, is V.K. Sanoj, the Democratic Youth Federation of India Secretary (Kerala).
Shailaja told ThePrint that she had successfully contested both difficult seats and party strongholds. For her maiden 1996 election, she was fielded in Kannur’s Koothuparamba, a constituency fought over by veteran leaders.
In Peravoor, she is focused on her opponent’s dwindling margins—his votes dropped from 7,000 in 2016 to 3,000 in 2021. Her campaign hinges on her vision for Peravoor—from tourism to sports infrastructure projects—and on pointing out the “inefficiencies” of Joseph’s administration.
“Party asked me: ‘You should be in the list. You should be among the candidates…you should contest in Peravoor again and catch that constituency for the LDF [Left Democratic Front].’ So I, with pride and enthusiasm, am contesting here, according to the party’s decision,” she told ThePrint.
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A Congress turf
In Kannur’s southeast, over 40 km from the district headquarters, parts of Peravoor still hold on to the past, as observed in old buildings, built in the state’s traditional architectural style, and its vast homesteads.
The constituency’s roads wind through hilly terrain and forests, underscoring the region’s vulnerability to monsoon disasters and man-animal conflicts. The constituency’s Aralam region has faced repeated man-animal conflict, with at least three fatalities reported in the past year. The Iritty region has gone through landslides during the monsoon.
Since 1977, the constituency, which has a notable Christian and Muslim population, has largely supported the Congress, except from 2006 to 2011, when Shailaja won from the seat.
However, the constituency was reorganised following the 2008 delimitation, and in the subsequent assembly elections in 2011, when Shailaja was fielded again, she lost to Congress’s Sunny Joseph by a margin of 3,440 votes. Joseph retained the constituency again in the 2016 election and, once again, in 2021, with margins of 7,989 and 3,172 votes, respectively.
In the 2025 local body polls, LDF won the Iritty municipality, the lone urban local body in the constituency, while UDF won five of the eight village panchayats. Peravoor was the Kannur district’s lone block panchayat that was captured by the UDF.
A former president of the District Congress Committee (DCC) in Kannur, Joseph is a long-time Congress worker who has worked in party-affiliated organisations, such as the KSU, in his teenage years. In May last year, the party appointed him KPCC president, replacing senior Congress leader K. Sudhakaran. The move was widely seen by analysts as aimed at retaining the party’s Christian vote base that was slowly beginning to shift to the BJP.
Facing the election for a fourth consecutive term, Joseph’s campaign involves extensive travel across the constituency, with public meetings by local functionaries at almost every key junction.
“I am fully confident. My workers are fully confident. My co-workers are fully confident. The public supports me—very, very well, very much. They are supporting me very much,” Joseph says after his speech in Keezhpally town in the constituency’s Aralam panchayat, while the rest of his speech targets the alleged misgovernance of the Pinarayi Vijayan government. He constantly lists his achievements in speeches and social media videos. These include several bridges and roads across the constituency.
Congress functionaries in the constituency also expressed confidence about Joseph’s victory.
Ibrahim Munderi, the party’s campaign chairman in the constituency, said Joseph was very active in the protest for Iritty Taluk, inaugurated under Oommen Chandy and formed by bifurcating the existing Thalassery and Taliparamba taluks in 2014. Joseph, he added, was also active in improving road infrastructure in the hilly region, which helped accessibility.
He said Joseph’s continued re-election was made possible because of his popularity among voters. Multiple voters told ThePrint that Joseph attends all events in the constituency without fail. His image as KPCC chief has boosted his popularity.
“Here, Shailaja, the teacher, will not have an impact. There are many opinions against her within the CPI(M) itself. The party has so much infighting; they just hide it well. But the public knows,” Munderi said.
A battle to repeat an old victory
Contesting against the KPCC president, Shailaja and CPI(M) are hoping that her vision and anti-incumbency sentiment will yield a positive result. She also told ThePrint that, except for state government projects such as the hill highway, Joseph had failed to bring any project of his vision to the area.
“The member of the legislative assembly should have some kind of policies or dreams to fulfil in a constituency. We should visit the places and have some projects in mind, especially for the constituency. This is a very good place for tourism, near the Pazhassi Reservoir area, and throughout this place, we could have very good tourism projects, but in these 15 years, no project was introduced here by the MLA,” she said. She said that she would also introduce a sports academy to improve sports infrastructure, which could benefit the state’s popular sportspersons.
However, her candidature in a Congress bastion has raised eyebrows both inside and outside the CPI(M).
A source from Kannur close to Shailaja even told ThePrint that she was feeling upset about the party’s decision. “If the party wanted her badly, she would have been fielded from Mattannur itself,” he said, adding that the decision could also be read in line with the party’s analysis that it was not making any waves in coastal and high-range communities.
Multiple party supporters told ThePrint that they would like to see Shailaja handling a major ministry, such as health or home, putting her talents to use. But they have not questioned the party’s decision.
Shailaja, a former high school teacher, took voluntary retirement in the early 2000s, choosing to be a full-time politician. Her political life began with the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and later the DYFI.
She contested her maiden election from Kannur’s Koothuparamba constituency, a Left bastion represented by Pinarayi Vijayan in 1996. Then years later in 2006, she was fielded from the undivided Peravoor constituency and won against Congress’s A.D. Musthafa. In 2011, Shailaja was fielded from Peravoor again but lost to Sunny Joseph.
In the 2016 election, she was fielded from Koothuparamba again and emerged as the health minister, in a period that brought her international accolades.
Her handling of the 2018 Nipah outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic earned international recognition, including from the United Nations and the Central European University.
In the 2021 assembly election, her name was widely projected as chief minister if the LDF returned to power. The LDF returned with a higher margin and Shailaja secured a record 60,963 margin, but she was not included in the cabinet. The LDF said that it had decided to bring in new faces, replacing existing ministers, except Pinarayi Vijayan.
Her removal triggered a debate in the media and Kerala society. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, she was fielded from Vadakara constituency, a seat held by Congress since 2009, against Shafi Parambil, but lost by 114,506 votes.
K.K. Ragesh, CPI(M) district secretary, said the politbureau decided that Pinarayi Vijayan should contest, but others who were two-time MLAs were not fielded from party strongholds. And, because of that, A.N. Shamseer, two-time Thalassery MLA, was not fielded in Kannur district.
Shailaja, similarly, was chosen for a different constituency. “Shailaja teacher welcomed this decision with so much happiness. She will be able to capture that seat because the MLA there is a failure,” Ragesh said.
CPI(M)’s campaign coordinator Sakkeer Hussain K.V. said the party thought a prominent name could wrest the seat, as Sunny Joseph’s margin had been declining. “Since bifurcation, we have been losing by small margins. There is a large public perception that the MLA is a failure. We are sure that it will become a victory for us,” he said.
However, political analyst K.P. Sethunath opined that Shailaja’s image within the party differs from her public image, as she faces internal criticism for self-promotion.
“If she wins, she will have to become a minister. That victory would have a huge impact, though such a prospect is far-fetched.”
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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