Kannada songs blaring from loudspeakers at a Congress election meeting in central Kerala is rare though the language is a sibling to Malayalam and is commonly spoken in the north of the state.
Playing on the loop at a corner meeting in Thrissur’s Ollur on Monday were Kannada songs eulogising Karnataka deputy chief minister D.K. Shivakumar, the Vokkaliga strongman deployed by the Congress as a star campaigner in Kerala.
After leading the party to a thumping victory in his home state last year, Shivakumar, also the Karnataka Congress president, played a key role in helping Telangana state president and now chief minister A. Revanth Reddy foil the hat-trick attempt by the Bharath Rashtra Samithi late last year.
Shivakumar is increasingly finding space in other states where his party workers and commoners throng to watch him let loose his volleys against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, communalism and hatred in particular.
When Shivakumar’s baritone boomed through huge columns of speakers at Ollur, passersby stopped their vehicles and autorickshaw drivers turned off their engines to
listen to him.
While his main task was to campaign for Congress’s K. Muraleedharan, who is in a three-way fight in Thrissur with V.S. Sunil Kumar of the CPI and actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi of the BJP, Shivakumar reminded the voters of Kerala how they ensured in 2019 that the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) win 19 of the 20 Lok Sabha seats, which forms the biggest chunk the party has in the outgoing Lower House.
“Last time, we got only 50-plus seats at the national level. You gave us 19 seats and created history. Even in Karnataka, we got only one seat; that is my brother (D.K. Suresh),” he said, thanking the Kerala voters and reminding them to help the UDF sweep all 20 seats this time.
“When you elected Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad, it was not a mere political event. Your votes elected a leader who fights for the people and thus provided strength to the entire country,” said Shivakumar, who had asked Rahul to contest from Karnataka in 2019 and also this election.
In making his pitch for the party in one of the few states where it still holds sway, Shivakumar added a personal note of gratitude for the people of Kerala, who “backed him in difficult times”.
“I have a lot of love and respect for Kerala. When I was in ED (Enforcement Directorate) custody, I was watching TV. I was arrested at 8pm and at 8.15pm, even before the news broke in Karnataka, youths in Kerala came out in my support with a procession,” he said.
He was referring to the ED raids at his properties in Bengaluru in August 2017 soon after he took charge of the 44 Congress MLAs, who were flown to the Karnataka capital from Gujarat ahead of the crucial Rajya Sabha elections. A master trouble-shooter,
Shivakumar sequestered them in a Bengaluru hotel to prevent BJP’s poaching attempts. The Supreme Court, however, last month dismissed the case in which he spent 50 days in Tihar jail in 2019.
It is perhaps that kind of connection Shivakumar manages to make with his audience which prompted autorickshaw driver Girijakshan to voice his concern for the party unit in Kerala. “We need a leader like DKS. I feel the only such leader in Kerala is (chief minister) Pinarayi Vijayan, who is strong enough to do what he says,” said Girijakshan.
