Senior CPI leader and former legislator Sathyan Mokeri will be the Left Democratic Front candidate in the by-election to Kerala’s Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, where Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi will make her electoral debut. The decision was taken at the CPI state council meeting held on Thursday. Party state secretary Binoy Viswom said, “Mokeri can make the contest a full-fledged political fight. He is a leader of several farmer struggles in the country. We are launching a senior farmer leader as LDF candidate in Wayanad,” he said. Mokeri, 70, is currently the national secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ wing of the CPI, and is also secretary of the party control commission. The CPI leader, a native of Mokeri in Kozhikode district, had been a legislator for three terms from 1987 to 2001, representing the Nadapuram Assembly seat. Mokeri joined the party through its student wing, All India Student Federation, and rose to its state and national leadership, and had been the state assistant secretary of the CPI. He had also served as a member of the State Agricultural Debt Relief Commission. Mokeri was the LDF candidate in Wayanad in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, but lost to the Congress’s sitting MP, M I Shanavas, by 20,870 votes. He said he would start campaigning from Saturday. “People of Wayanad have always been with the Left movement. We approach the election as a political fight and hope voters will accept our politics,” he said. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, CPI had fielded its national leader, Annie Raja, in Wayanad. In the election, Rahul Gandhi retained the seat for the second consecutive term.
