4 min readApr 23, 2026 01:09 PM IST
First published on: Mar 31, 2026 at 06:17 AM IST
Back in the 1980s when serial scams drove national news, cartoonist O V Vijayan couldn’t tell leaders from dealers.
He drew an extraterrestrial alien stepping out of a flying saucer and asking a Congressman to “take me to your dealer”. Decades later, in poll-bound Kerala today, the air is thick with the D-word. Only, the alleged deals now are entirely political.
The state’s two broad-based veteran alliances in the fray are accusing each other of hobnobbing with not just the significant saffron player but every fringe Islamic group. In so many words, CPI(M) and Congress are acknowledging an election that is getting less one-sided. From the core of this anxiety springs the new aggression to run down the rival as the betrayer of the secular cause.
One has heard more measured versions of this competitive secularism before. In the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign, CM Pinarayi Vijayan warned Kerala against voting Congress. Like a risk analyst, he listed the national party’s post-poll deserters who walked across to the BJP. He was telling the state’s multi-faith electorate to make a defection-proof choice. That meant choosing comrades over Congressmen, if you seriously wish to combat the BJP.
Vijayan was at his political peak then, having won an unusual second successive chief ministerial term in a state that seldom rewards the incumbent. Thronging crowds cheered him in each of the 20 parliamentary constituencies only to return on polling day to pick just one CPI(M) candidate. The state sent an impressive Congress contingent to the Lok Sabha, 14 MPs including Priyanka Gandhi. This could have happened only because many who voted Left in the assembly elections switched. Kerala decided that Congress MPs were best suited to counter the BJP in Delhi.
Vijayan has to persuade voters to rethink now. In the last two years since the Lok Sabha poll, does the electorate have reason enough to distrust Congress? The most articulate of the state’s Congress MPs, Shashi Tharoor, speaks his mind every now and then, to trigger reflexive media speculation on his exit to the BJP. Even as he endorses the Narendra Modi government’s strategic silence on the Iran war, Tharoor is back home vigorously campaigning for the parent party. Last week, former state party chief and Kannur MP K Sudhakaran gave the party some anxious moments. He camped in Delhi for four days to secure a ticket, hinting at other options if the high command didn’t budge. The command in question didn’t and the veteran promptly returned to extend blessings to the party nominee.
No Congress MP betrayed the Kerala voter, as Vijayan warned. Instead, it is his own party that is beginning to look uncharacteristically shaky. Marxist stalwart G Sudhakaran ended his lifelong association with the party and is contesting from Ambalapuzha constituency as an Independent with Congress support. He has gleefully welcomed BJP votes. V D Satheesan, Leader of the Opposition in the assembly and lead Congress campaigner, is rushing to welcome one mid-level CPI(M) defector after another.
What is driving leaders out of the erstwhile Left fortress is a growing disconnect from Vijayan’s leadership. As party chief for 18 years and then as CM for the past 10 years, he has become the sole authority in government and party. This goes against the familiar party ecosystem of a semblance of power-sharing across multiple committees under a Delhi-based general secretary. For all practical purposes, authority was always handled by a select few but the oligarchy at worst shrank to a diarchy. The spectre haunting Kerala now is a sole supremo — Vijayan’s rise coincided with the party’s retreat from Bengal and Tripura into his home turf.
On hoardings, state-wide, the single image is the clean-shaven chief ministerial face. Since these were sarkari ads issued before the model code came into force, even the party symbol is missing. Comrade Vijayan is the party. If Kerala’s voters endorse this, CPI(M) becomes an uncomplicated regional party like M K Stalin’s DMK, Lalu Prasad’s RJD or Mamata Banerjee’s TMC — as secular and flexible.
The writer is chief political cartoonist at The Indian Express. ep.unny@expressindia.com
The state’s two broad-based veteran alliances in the fray are accusing each other of hobnobbing with not just the significant saffron player but every fringe Islamic group. 
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