Gloves off in Congress-Left fight in Kerala, BJP very much in the ring

The CPI(M), into its unprecedented second consecutive term in power, is looking to reverse its 2019 loss. Its campaign this time focused on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), calling it a “threat posed by the BJP to minorities”, and questioning the Congress’s “silence” on the issue.

As the issue heated up, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said the CAA would be repealed in the first session of Parliament if the INDIA bloc came to power.

Rahul Gandhi in Malappuram district. (File hoto)

If the CPI(M) accused the Congress of being too weak to take on the Sangh Parivar, the Congress accused the CPI(M) of “helping” the BJP to defeat the UDF. Rahul himself led the allegations of a “nexus” between the CPI(M) and the BJP, claiming that Vijayan is reluctant to speak against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and questioning why the Kerala CM had not been arrested despite facing charges when two other Opposition party leaders – Arvind Kejriwal and Hemant Soren – were jailed. In response, Vijayan reminded Rahul that it was “his grandmother (PM Indira Gandhi) who had jailed us for one-and-a-half years” during the Emergency.

For the BJP, which has never won a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, the contest was about improving its vote share. The BJP-led NDA focused its campaign on the achievements of the 10-year-long Modi regime. Besides its “Modi’s guarantee for Kerala” slogan, the BJP also tried to woo Christian voters, playing on the fear among many Christians of “rising Islamic extremism”. But the violence in Manipur cast a shadow on the BJP’s bid to win Christian votes.

The screening by State-run Doordarshan of The Kerala Story, extrapolating that a large number of women of the state were being wooed to join the Islamic State, became an issue against this backdrop. As several Catholic dioceses also held screenings of the film, and the CPI(M) and Congress opposed it, the BJP attacked their “double standards” with regard to “freedom of expression”.

Minorities, including Muslims at around 27% and Christians at 18%, make up 45% of Kerala’s population and are a traditional vote bank of the UDF.

For several BJP candidates, the main pitch was that voters had a chance to have a Union minister at the Centre. But the party campaign was focused mainly in Thiruvananthapuram, Attingal, Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta, Thrissur and Kasaragod, where the BJP has a significant voter base.

The high-profile Kerala contests include Wayanad, where Rahul is taking on the CPI’s Annie Raja and the BJP’s K Surendran; Thiruvananthapuram, where three-term Congress MP Shashi Tharoor is facing the BJP’s Rajeev Chandrasekhar and the CPI’s Pannian Raveendran; Thrissur, where popular actor-turned-politician and BJP candidate Suresh Gopi is posing a challenge to K Muraleedharan of the Congress and V S Sunil Kumar of the LDF; and Vadakara, where young Congress legislator Shafi Parambil is taking on senior CPI(M) leader and former health minister K K Shailaja.