The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] attempted to salvage some comfort from the party’s disastrous showing in the Puthuppally Assembly byelection by attributing the emphatic Congress win to an “all-subsuming sympathy wave” for the late Chief Minister Oommen Chandy.
Party State secretary M.V. Govindan said Puthuppally witnessed gut-level emotional voting for the late Congress leader. The sympathy factor that helped the Congress win in Puthuppally byelection would not feed into future elections. “It was a one-time and transient electoral phenomenon with a scarce chance of repeating itself,” Mr. Govindan claimed.
Mr. Govindan said the Congress had previously won byelections only to lose the seats to the Left Democratic Front in subsequent general elections. The bypoll result was no bellwether of Kerala’s voting behaviour ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and beyond. Nor was it a litmus test of the popularity of the Pinarayi Vijayan government.
Mr. Govindan said the surge of commiseration for the late leader swept away other issues, including the dismal lack of local development, at stake in Puthuppally. He said it also advantaged the Congress that Chandy’s son and political heir Chandy Oommen was the United Democratic Front (UDF) candidate.
Mr. Govindan noted the campaign unfolded during the mourning period for Chandy. “Chandy Oommen has correctly said the vote was for his late father, somewhat obliquely imputing it was not a resounding yes for the Congress. Mr. Oommen categorised his victory as his late father Chandy’s 13th unbroken win from the Puthuppally Assembly constituency,” Mr. Govindan said.
He claimed the CPI(M) braved the avalanche of empathy for the late leader and held on to its core support base by forking in an estimated 42,000-odd votes.
He said the Bharatiya Janata Party’s vote share in Puthuppally in successive elections had decreased incrementally from almost 20,000 to less than 7,000 in the recent byelection. He said the BJP clandestinely channelled votes to the Congress to spite the CPI(M). The trend hewed to a pattern prevalent in elections in Kerala and pointed to an unholy nexus between the Congress and the BJP in the State.
