Chennai: A former CPI legislator, a two-time BJP councillor, and a Tamil Sikh woman aspiring to bring social reformation, are the opponents of Congress’s Priyanka Gandhi in her electoral debut in the 13 November Wayanad Lok Sabha bypoll.
Priyanka is making her electoral debut after her brother Rahul Gandhi vacated this seat in Kerala. Rahul, who represented Wayanad in Parliament in 2019, was reelected this year with a margin of 3,64,422 votes. However, having won both Wayanad and Uttar Pradesh’s Raebareli, Rahul decided to vacate the Kerala seat.
“We are expecting a lead of over 5 lakh for Priyanka Gandhi. The party cadres have already covered campaigns in all booths and we are receiving positive responses from every household,” Congress local leader Samshad Marakkar, also the Wayanad district panchayat president, told ThePrint.
Though the result of Wayanad, a constituency that only voted for the United Democratic Front (UDF) since it was formed in 2009, is more or less clear, the campaigns of the rival Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are in full swing, with both sides highlighting the absence of Rahul and long-pending local issues, including a need for a medical college, that remain unresolved.
The Wayanad parliamentary constituency comprises three assembly segments of Wayanad (Mananthavady, Sulthan Bathery, and Kalpetta) and Malappuram (Eranad, Nilambur, Wandoor), besides Thiruvambady of Kozhikode.
“People of Wayanad will think differently this time. Rahul promised to address Wayanad’s problems. But he never did it. And now he betrayed the constituency the moment he won Raebareli. Voters are aware of it,” senior CPI leader Sathyan Mokeri, the LDF candidate, told ThePrint.
Sathyan, a former journalist, represented Kozhikode’s Nadapuram in the Kerala Assembly from 1987 to 2001. The Communist Party of India (CPI) leader, a familiar face among the people, had contested the Lok Sabha polls from Wayanad in 2014 but lost to UDF’s M.I.Shanavas.
Senior farmer leader Sathyan Mokeri will be the LDF candidate for Wayanad Lok Sabha.
A committed leader, Comrade Sathyan Mokeri has served three terms as MLA and is currently secretary of National Party Control Commission & National Joint-Secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha. pic.twitter.com/ibtW2mJZnW
— CPI – Communist Party of India (@CPI_National) October 18, 2024
“The constituency has been with Congress for over a decade. Shanavas didn’t do anything. And after Rahul came, he also hasn’t done anything. The only thing in his name here is some high mast lights. He hasn’t even resolved basic issues we face such as the man-animal conflict or the long pending demand for a medical college,” Wayanad BJP president Prasanth Malavayal told ThePrint.
Prasanth said the party was highlighting these issues in its door-to-door campaigns.
After fielding its state chief K.Surendran against Rahul earlier this year, the BJP has chosen Navya Haridas as its candidate against Priyanka. The 39-year-old is a former IT professional as well as a general secretary of the BJP’s women wing. A councillor in the Kozhikode municipal corporation, Navya was elected first in 2015 and retained her seat in 2020.
“She is not an unfamiliar face. She was a two-time councillor in Kozhikode. Where BJP has no presence. She is well educated and quit her job to do politics. She has been able to understand and address Wayanad in a short time,” Malavayal said.
Navya, meanwhile, said Priyanka has the legacy of her family but no experience of working with the people on the ground.
“I work with the people and was able to win the local body polls the second time because of it. I don’t think we can refer to Priyanka as a leader,” she told ThePrint. “In Wayanad, the fight is between the BJP and the Congress.”
Among the traditional rivals, Wayanad this time has the presence of the Bahujan Dravida Party (BDP) which aims to to uproot casteism and bring social justice through Sikhism.
BDP founder Jeevan Singh had fielded seven candidates, erstwhile followers of different faiths who converted to Sikhism, in Tamil Nadu in this year’s general elections.
BDP candidate A. Seetha said the party is working to uplift the oppressed communities and for social reformation through Sikhism. “I got a chance to contest in Wayanad. When someone from the north is coming to rule here, I, a Dravidian born in the south, want to rule it,” Seetha, a native of Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli settled in Chennai, told ThePrint.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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