Swiftly clearing the heap of files which were waiting for him, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan shot off to Thrikkakara immediately after returning from the United States of America where he had gone for a two-week-long, second round of treatment at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota. Looking fresh and recharged, the 76-year-old strongman of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) gave a rousing start to the Left Democratic Front’s official election campaign for the May 31 bypoll to the Thrikkakara assembly seat in Ernakulam district.
“This is an opportunity for Thrikkakara to correct a mistake. Let’s make it a century,” exhorted Vijayan. He referred to the constituency electing the late Congress leader, P.T. Thomas, defying the LDF wave in the 2021 assembly elections. Even when the LDF won a second term in a row for the first time, bagging 99 out of 140 seats, Thomas had romped home by an impressive margin of 14,329 votes in this traditional Congress bastion. The bypoll has been caused by Thomas’s demise last December.
Thrikkakara’s result may not immediately affect the stability of the one-year-old Vijayan government. Yet, the stakes are high for both the LDF and the United Democratic Front that are leaving no stone unturned. The candidates of both fronts have made the contest more dramatic. The UDF, which usually goes through much haggling before picking candidates, lost no time in selecting Uma Thomas, the wife of the departed Thomas, eyeing the sympathy factor to fortify its bastion further.
Even though Uma wasn’t active in politics since her marriage, she had accompanied Thomas to election campaigns. During their college days, she was Thomas’s comrade when he was the state president of the Kerala Students Union of the Congress Party. Their love affair and unconventional marriage — she a Brahmin and he a Catholic — had made news those days.
Things were different for the LDF, which usually takes no time to announce candidates, this time. After long parleys, the CPI(M) finally came out with a surprise choice; Jo Joseph, a prominent cardiac surgeon with no direct political links. Joseph, who works in Ernakulam’s major Catholic church-run hospital, met the media to announce his candidature at his hospital and in his surgeon’s costume. Flanked by top CPI(M) leaders, fellow doctors, and priests from the hospital management, Joseph quipped like a seasoned politician; “I have never been in politics but always admired the Left. As a heart specialist, don’t I know that the Left of our body is the abode of the heart?” Although not involved directly in politics, Joseph said he used to be associated with pro-Left doctors’ groups.
Joseph’s selection triggered a furore. The UDF and the Bharatiya Janata Party cried hoarse that the CPI(M) was fielding a “son of the Church” to woo the powerful SyroMalabar Catholic Church, which is quite influential in the urban constituency that has a 35 per cent Christian population. They slammed the presence of priests at his media meet and charged that the CPI(M) was trying to utilise the SMC’s hostility towards the late Thomas. The SMC never liked Thomas who, unlike the Congress leadership, had never bowed before it despite being a Catholic from the Church-dominated Idukki district. Thomas was one of the very few politicians who supported the 2011 report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, which cautioned against widespread encroachment on the Ghats and their forests. The SMC was at the forefront of the protest against the report, saying its recommendations would lead to large-scale evacuation of farmers settled in the Ghat region. A large number of the settlers belonged to the SMC. But immediately after charges rose that Joseph was the Church’s candidate, the SMC clarified it had nothing to do with him or any political party but would support whoever helped it. The UDF leadership soon realised the price of provoking the SMC, which was its traditional ally, and stopped connecting it with Joseph’s candidature. Internal schisms, too, worked against the SMC taking any clear political position. Even though the LDF has never won in Thrikkakara, a defeat would be seen as a referendum on the government that has just completed its first year. That explains its search for a candidate with an appeal beyond political and social boundaries. The LDF camp has been strengthened by the support from K.V. Thomas, a Congress MP from Ernakulam for 22 years and a minister of state in the second United Progressive Alliance government. Once a Gandhi family loyalist, Thomas was expelled from the Congress after he attended a CPI(M) seminar, defying the party’s ban. Thomas has close links with the churches and has been working for the LDF in Thrikkakara.
A resounding win is essential for the Congress as well. Notwithstanding its unprecedented victory last year, the LDF government has been caught in a spiral of controversies within a year in power. Widespread opposition to the government’s proposed Rs 65,000 crore semi-automatic rail project — the SilverLine — has put it in a fix. The bypoll is touted as a referendum on the SilverLine project. The UDF knows that the inflexible Vijayan would be totally unstoppable if it doesn’t win big. The new Congress leadership consisting of the state president, K. Sudhakaran, and the Opposition leader, V.D. Satheesan, was brought in by the high command after the electoral debacle in 2021. This led to the virtual marginalisation of the former chief minister, Oommen Chandy, and the former party president, Ramesh Chennithala, the ultimate power centres for two decades. Both veterans have been sulking since. A less impressive win would make things difficult for the new duo in the Congress and the UDF.
The BJP’s state vice-president, A.N. Radhakrishnan, is the National Democratic Alliance’s candidate. The BJP secured about 12 per cent of the vote in 2021 and is also trying to woo Christians by trying to project its newly-developing friendship with the Church leadership. The BJP fully backed the Church’s recent allegations of ‘love jihad’. According to the SMC, Christian girls are being lured by Muslim youths into love affairs and marriages to be used for terrorist operations. An SMC archbishop said ‘narcotic jihad’ was prevalent under which Muslims are peddling drugs among the young. The charges drew wide protests, with only the BJP defending the Church. The BJP state president, K. Surendran, has said that both the LDF and the UDF should reply at Thrikkakara about why they didn’t help the Church. To make the message louder, the NDA candidate, Radhakrishnan, received the security deposit from the SMC’s Ahmedabad diocese metropolitan, Mathews Mar Severios.
Another interesting development is the decision to not contest by the recently formed ‘apolitical’ outfit, Twenty20, despite it being strongest in Ernakulam. The party had garnered 10.18 per cent of the vote in its debut contest in 2021. It was initially announced that Twenty20 and the Aam Aadmi Party would field a common candidate. On May 15, the Delhi chief minister and the AAP national convener, Arvind Kejriwal, visited the Twenty20 headquarters in Ernakulam and announced the alliance which he called the ‘People’s Welfare Alliance’. Presumably, the recent clashes between Twenty20’s founder and prominent businessman, Sabu M. Jacob, and the state government over some business issues have led him not to split votes against the LDF.
(M.G. Radhakrishnan, a senior journalist based in Thiruvananthapuram, has worked with various print and electronic media organisations)
