Kozhikode: Ardent Congress supporters in Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency has been desperately dialling top leaders of the party, including AICC general secretary in-charge of Kerala Mukul Wasnik, demanding the fielding of a strong candidate. The clamour has been on since Saturday when the first list of Congress candidates was out.
The grassroots activists of the party fear that the leadership is set to miss a good opportunity, when many local parties, including the Revolutionary Marxist Party of India (RMPI), have offered support to the United Democratic Front (UDF) in a bid to defeat LDF candidate P Jayarajan.
Posters have come up in areas like Kuttiady, the only Assembly segment in Vadakara constituency where the UDF won in 2016, against the bid to place weak candidates in place of sitting MP and KPCC chief Mullappally Ramachandran. On Saturday, when the name of Vidya Balakrishnan, a UDF councillor in Kozhikode corporation, was proposed, the RMPI as well as UDF ally Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) had expressed their dissent. Some posters in the name of 'Save Congress' read that 'Mullappallyude Vidya Venda' as an apparent jibe punning on the name of Vidya.
A UDF convention scheduled to be held in Vadakara on Monday has been postponed. The reason for the same was informed as the non-availability of the senior leaders in the constituency, but the party workers ask how a convention can be held without announcing a candidate. The workers are also not able to campaign even after forming an election committee here, since the a candidate has not been confirmed. On the other hand, LDF candidate Jayarajan has gone far ahead in campaigning.
Social media campaigns of the frustrated Congress workers against the leadership are also active, stating that the leadership is conspiring with the CPM to ease the victory of Jayarajan. They also went to the extreme of declaring themselves to be the candidate, making a mockery of the situation. The grass-root level workers allege that the leadership was considering only the caste equations (Thiyya candidate) and not the ground reality.
Since Mullappally is determined not to contest, they believe that only a strong candidate like K Muraleedharan or V M Sudheeran, or at least A P Abdullakkutty (considering the Muslim consolidation) only could leak even the LDF votes in a Left stronghold.
Vadakara constituency has seven assembly segments - Thalassery, Koothuparamba, Nadapuram, Vadakara, Kuttiady, Koyilandy and Perambra. Only Kuttiady elected a UDF legislator in 2016 Assembly polls – Parakkal Abdulla of the IUML.
MP Veerendrakumar's Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD), which has pockets of influence here, is now with the LDF, which is another worrying factor for the Congress. The only solace for the UDF would be slain T P Chandrasekharan's RMPI, which offered to support the UDF in Vadakara and decided not to field its candidate in a bid to defeat Jayarajan.
Through the Shakti App, launched by the Congress to assign tasks to workers and also to elicit feedback, the workers from Vadakara put forward only one name – Mullappally.
In fact, the A-I group fight over the Wayanad seat is delaying the selection of Congress candidates in Vadakara and Alappuzha seats. When the A group strongly pitches for Kozhikode DCC president T Siddique in Wayanad, the I group wants the seat for AICC member Shanimol Usman. If not considered for Wayanad, her name was the first in the list for Alappuzha after sitting MP K C Venugopal decided not to contest again. Siddique, meanwhile, told the leadership that he would not contest in a seat other than Wayanad.