Wayanad: Leaders of the RJD, Congress, SP, CPI (ML), CPI and CPM — parties in the INDIA bloc — together launched their Lok Sabha election campaign in Bihar last month. Called the Jan Vishwas Rally, the event saw RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, and Left leaders such as Dipanka Bhattacharya, Sitaram Yechuri and D. Raja, sharing a stage and asking people to vote the BJP, ruling at the Centre, out of power for its divisive politics.
However, the situation is different in Kerala. Part of the INDIA bloc, the Congress and communist parties, are fighting tooth and nail against each other in the southern state, where they have been traditional rivals.
While both parties’ campaigns highlight the need to dethrone the BJP from the Centre to save democracy, they never forget to criticise each other’s policies too.
This has become the key poll plank of the BJP, which has never won a parliamentary seat in the southern state. The BJP’s Kerala campaign is led by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
During his campaign in Alathur constituency Monday, Modi said: “Beware of the (ruling CPM-led) Left Democratic Front (LDF) and (opposition Congress-led) United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala. The Congress calls the Left people terrorists. But in Delhi, they sit together, eat together and make strategies for elections.”
The BJP’s local unit too is doing its part to amplify this.
“We highlight this irony in our campaigns. We mention this in each candidate’s pamphlet, leaders’ campaign speeches, TV debates and in door-to-door campaigns,” advocate Gopinath, a BJP leader in Wayanad, told ThePrint.
However, state leaders from both the LDF and UDF as well as political analysts believe that the BJP’s campaign won’t resonate with voters as they are aware of the situation in India.
“The people of Kerala don’t have any issues with it (CPM and Congress’s campaigns). Because there is no BJP in the state. They (BJP) don’t have enough strength to win a Lok Sabha seat. They might come second in one or two seats. In every other place, the fight is between the LDF and UDF,” said Shamsad Marakkar, vice-president of Wayanad district Congress committee, adding that the electoral battle in Kerala was always between the LDF and UDF even for local body polls and voters were aware of the situation.
He explained that both parties (Congress and CPM) had their own organisational set-up and ideological and political stand, but had come together at the national level since both opposed the BJP, which was the purpose of the INDIA alliance.
Joseph C. Mathew, a political analyst based in the state, said that though both parties would have loved to fight the Lok Sabha election on issues including each other’s economic policies, they were forced to put their differences aside as democracy was under threat.
“In Kerala, this is the ideal scenario,” Joseph said, talking about the electoral equation in the state.
Why does Kerala matter?
While the state is witnessing a three-way contest in around five of its 20 Lok Sabha seats, the battle is mainly between the LDF and UDF and victory from Kerala is crucial for both the CPM and Congress.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, 15 of the 52 seats the Congress had won from across India were from Kerala while its allies IUML, RSP and Kerala Congress (Mani) won two, one and one seats each, respectively, in the state.
The party particularly benefitted from the anti-incumbency sentiment fuelled by the Sabarimala protests and Rahul Gandhi’s candidacy in Wayanad, which created a pro-UDF wave across the state. This was the party’s best performance in India followed by eight seats each it won from Tamil Nadu and Punjab, and three seats each from Telangana and Assam.
A clean sweep from the state is crucial for the Congress for its political prospects, as the party is only in power in three states (Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana) now.
As for the communist parties, the CPI(M) won three seats across India (one from Kerala and two from Tamil Nadu) and the CPI won two seats (both from Tamil Nadu). Kerala is the only state in India which has a communist party in power.
This is evident in both parties’ (CPM and Congress) campaigns across the state.
While the LDF says the Congress is not politically strong enough to oppose the BJP, the Congress mostly targets the LDF for its faults in leading the government. At times, both parties also accuse each other of allying with the BJP to weaken the other party.
According to Joseph, while the LDF is asking for votes based on its strong political stand against the BJP, the UDF is asking Kerala voters to vote for the Congress as it has a presence in many states to defeat the BJP.
“The Congress is working as a B team of the BJP,” alleged T.S. Madhu, a Thrissur-based CPI(M) member, adding that the BJP has many defectors from the Congress.
He pointed out that among the elected MPs from Kerala, LDF’s A.M. Ariff had reacted in Parliament against the BJP on issues of national interest.
Alappuzha and Wayanad become key battleground
Of the 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerala, only five to six have a three-way contest, with every other seat seeing a bipolar fight between the traditional rivals. Both the LDF and UDF have fielded senior and popular leaders across all constituencies with many seats having sitting MLAs, MPs and former ministers in the fray.
However, the LDF is particularly irked with the UDF in two constituencies, Wayanad and Alappuzha, where the Congress fielded its two national leaders, Rahul Gandhi and K.C. Venugopal, respectively.
While the LDF’s lone sitting MP A.M. Ariff is seeking a second term from Alappuzha, its national leader Annie Raja will take on Rahul Gandhi in Wayanad. As for the BJP, its state chief K. Surendran is contesting in Wayanad and senior leader Sobha Surendran is fighting from Alappuzha.
While campaigning in Alappuzha earlier this month, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had said that Venugopal’s candidacy in Alappuzha would pave the way for the addition of a BJP MP in Parliament.
Vijayan said that if Venugopal won and resigned as Rajya Sabha MP, the Rajya Sabha seat would eventually go to the BJP as the Congress would be unable to win it.
P. Gagarin, CPI(M)’s district secretary of Wayanad, said Rahul Gandhi should have contested from a seat in north India if he wanted to take on the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls, as the Congress claimed.
“The BJP is not coming to power because they are getting seats from Tamil Nadu or Kerala. So, if the Congress is contesting here, it’s sure that it’s not to defeat the BJP, but to weaken the LDF, which is the strongest voice against the BJP,” Gagarin said.
Meanwhile, the Congress said Venugopal had represented Alappuzha several times in the past and it was the party’s prerogative to decide its candidate. Local Congress leaders pointed out that Rahul Gandhi was also contesting from the seat from where he had won with the largest majority in Kerala in 2019.
According to Marakkar, CM Vijayan criticised the UDF and Rahul Gandhi the most, but did not talk about PM Modi and home minister Amit Shah as he was “scared of the central government”.
However, at some level, the senior leaders from both sides (CPM and Congress) seem aware of their dichotomy and are treading carefully.
For instance, on Monday during a rally in Sultan Bathery town, Rahul Gandhi spent less than three minutes criticising the Kerala government, without naming the party in power, and spent the rest of his nearly 15-minute speech criticising the BJP-led central government.
The senior Congress leader alleged that both the state and Centre had a step-motherly attitude towards the constituency of Wayanad, while devoting the bulk of his speech to how the Congress would fight the RSS ideology.
He added that the idea that India should have only one leader and one language was an insult to its citizens. “This is the basic difference between us (Congress) and them (BJP). We want to listen to everyone but the BJP wants to impose everything. We didn’t get independence to be colonised by the RSS,” he said.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also Read: How the Malayali Gulf migrant became the ‘suffering rich’