Malappuram: Communist Party of India (Marxist) will field V P Sanu, the national president of the Students' Federation of India (SFI), as the Left Democratic Front (LDF) candidate in the upcoming Malappuram Lok Sabha by-election, while Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to field its national vice-president A P Abdullakutty for the seat.
The United Democratic Front (UDF) is yet to disclose the name of its likely candidate for the Lok Sabha bypoll.
The by-election was necessitated by the resignation of Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader P K Kunhalikutty from the seat to "lead his party's poll campaign" in the Kerala assembly election. He had won from the constituency in the 2019 Lok Sabha election by a margin of 2,60,153 votes.
Kunhalikutty had in 2017 resigned the Vengara constituency in the Assembly and got elected as an MP from Malappuram in a bye-election after the death of former Union Minister and senior IUML leader E Ahamed and went on to win the 2019 LS polls too.
A two-time CPI(M) MP, Abdullakutty was first expelled from the Left party in 2009 for expressing admiration for Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was the Gujarat Chief minister. He later joined the Congress and was twice elected to the state assembly.
The Congress had in June 2019 expelled him from the party, days after he lavished praise on the PM for the BJP-led NDA's massive victory in the 2019 general election.
In a Facebook post, Abdullakutty had said the NDA's victory was an acceptance of Modi's development agenda and that the secret of his success was he adopted Gandhian values.
