Cong, League take a big hit

VS Achuthanandan, the Left’s Chief Minister-probable, won comfortably in Malampuzha on a 20,017 vote margin, while almost all other major contestants from the Left stable also managed to ride the Left wave. Among important UDF men who survived are Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, and ministers AP Anil Kumar and KC Venugopal. The biggest victory margin went to the Left’s M Chandran contesting from Alathur, who notched a record margin of over 47,000 votes.

So dismal was the UDF’s performance that many of its heavies who figured in the last UDF cabinet had to bite the dust. They include Cooperation minister MV Raghavan, Health ministers P Sankaran and KK Ramachandran, Public Works minister M K Muneer, Education minister ET Mohammed Basheer, Industries minister P K Kunhalikutty, Electricity minister Kadavoor Sivadasan, Agriculture minister K R Gowri, Irrigation minister TM Jacob, Local Self Government minister Cherkalam Abdulla and Transport minister R Balakrishna Pillai. Losers also included the UDF convenor, PP Thankachan.

It was her first electoral defeat for the minister K R Gowri, who is also the state’s oldest and longest serving MLA and its longest serving woman minister. She lost to a young and little known Left opponent. No better was the plight of K Karunakaran’s DIC(K), which had sidled up to the UDF after the CPM Politburo asked its state apparatchiks to shoo it off—the Left courted it for the local bodies poll last year. Karunakaran had wrangled 18 seats to contest from after the Congress agreed to have him on its side. It lost in all but one, and the losers include K Muralidharan, Karunakaran’s son and the outfit’s president.

Muralidharan had got the Muslim League to give him the League’s secure seat in Koduvally, apprehending being done in by the same Congress men he had once led as KPCC chief. The only seat that the DIC(K) got was Kuttanad, where its NRI businessman-turned-candidate Thomas Chandy, locally known as Kuwait Chandy, won amid allegations that he had liberally used his NRI money to win.

Karunakaran ascribed the rout of his own outfit to his “enemies” in the Congress, who he alleged had worked to defeat his men. He attributed the UDF’s stunning defeat to his bete noire Oommen Chandy’s “misgovernance”, and more particularly to Chandy sidelining him. “He (Oommen) kept me completely out of the poll campaign. He personally made sure that I wouldn’t be allowed to share the dais with Sonia Gandhi, when she addressed campaign rallies in the State,” said a visibly depressed Karunakaran.

The strife-torn BJP, which has been claiming to have achieved the critical mass for producing its first Kerala MLA, had its hopes dashed yet again. Its top horse in the race, former Union minister O Rajagopalan not only lost in Palakkad but also could not draw even as many votes as his lesser known BJP predecessor in the constituency, Udaya Bhaskar, had managed in 2001. The BJP’s only other hope Manjeswaram came a cropper with the party finishing a poor third. That apart, its state vote share also went down this poll to 4.7 per cent, from 5 per cent in the 2001 poll that had zoomed to over 12 per cent in the subsequent 2002 Lok Sabha poll.

Worse still was the case of the Muslim League, which had its biggest drubbing ever. Its top leaders in the poll fray were beaten and the party had to limp home with just eight seats out of the 21 that it contested, down from the 16 it had in the last Assembly poll. In contrast, Left appendage Indian National League (INL) bagged its first seat in the Kerala Assembly this poll.

KPCC president Ramesh Chennithala alleged that the LDF had achieved its victory only because it allied with communal and casteist forces, and the state would now have to face its aftermath. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, however, said he accepted personal responsibility for the “unexpected defeat”.

Before the election, it was my wish to see the seventh Left Front government. It is good to know that my dream is going to be fulfilled… Buddhadev Bhattacherjee will have to play a more crucial role in Delhi in view of the differences between the Left and UPA
— CPI (M) veteran Jyoti Basu

Certainly, I am not disappointed. At this stage, I will not speak further. We thank the central and the state governments for their good performance…we congratulate the media for their role from the very beginning. They are the man of the match.
— Mamata Banerjee