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Campaigning for key Puthuppally bypoll concludes
Polling in Puthuppally is scheduled to be held September 5 and the votes would be counted on September 8
The campaign by the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF), Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) for the Puthuppally Assembly by-election in Kerala reached a feverish pitch before drawing to a close on Sunday evening.
Leaders and workers of all three fronts participated in the traditional ‘kalashakottu’ or show of strength at the Pambady town junction in the constituency till 6pm by raising slogans and flashing giant flags and banners. The traffic junction, crowded with hundreds of workers, was filled with flags of red, tricolour and saffron representing each of the parties.
While CPI(M) candidate Jaick C Thomas and BJP nominee Ligin Lal were present at the ‘kalashakottu’, the Congress’ Chandy Oommen, widely considered to be the front-runner in the election, marched barefoot in another part of the constituency, reminiscing the similar experience of walking in the Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi last year.
The by-election was necessitated by the death of Oommen Chandy, Congress veteran and two-time chief minister of the state, who represented Puthuppally in the Kerala Assembly for 12 consecutive terms, since 1970. He held the record for the longest-served MLA in the Assembly before his death, on July 18.
The Congress hopes to retain the constituency on the back of a sympathy wave for Chandy, whose funeral procession was attended by lakhs of people. By nominating his son Chandy Oommen (45) as the candidate, the Congress can claim sympathy votes as well as play the youth card. While Chandy Oommen was not active in the state’s party organisation, he is the national convenor of the outreach cell of the Youth Congress and was a regular participant of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. The grand old party has claimed that it will win by at least 50,000 votes, a margin that not even Oommen Chandy could get over 53 years.
“UDF’s win is guaranteed. Seeing the response of the people, I am hopeful that there will be public support in my favour. It’s not sympathy for Oommen Chandy, it’s pride for him and the respect for him that will reflect in this election,” Chandy Oommen told a local TV channel.
On the other hand, the CPI(M) sought votes in this bypoll by arguing that the constituency, despite being served by the same man for over five decades even when he was the chief minister, suffered from a lack of development, a problem the party claimed to have a solution to. In his campaign meetings in the constituency, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan underlined the various schemes and programmes the state government brought in the last six-and-a-half years. He argued that the progress achieved in other parts of the state would come to Puthuppally as well through the victory of a Left MLA.
The CPI(M) exuded optimism in the fact that the LDF governs six of the eight panchayats that form Puthuppally Assembly segment and that its candidate Jaick C Thomas is a familiar face, having contested against Chandy twice. In the 2021 Assembly elections, Thomas was able to bring down the victory margin of Chandy from 27,000 votes earlier to just over 9,000 votes. The CPI(M) candidate also belongs to the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, which wields considerable influence in the area.
“The LDF’s graph in this constituency has been steadily rising. Earlier, it seemed like a unilateral contest but then as days went by, it was clear that there is a political fight here which is neck-to-neck. The people of Puthuppally will decide on September 5,” Thomas told a TV channel.
Though seen as a direct contest between the LDF and UDF, the BJP has also made its presence felt in the bypoll by nominating its Kottayam district president Ligin Lal as the candidate. The saffron party’s best performance in the constituency was in 2016 when George Kurien got nearly 12% of the total vote-share. In 2021, the party vote-share slid to less than 9%. The BJP has campaigned on the premise that voters should be willing to reject both the LDF and UDF, and instead back a party that governs at the national level under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“The people here are discussing development and they are realising that they have been cheated for the past 53 years. They are speaking out about it and it will come out in the favour of the NDA,” Lal said.
Polling in Puthuppally is scheduled to be held September 5 and the votes would be counted on September 8.
