Kottayam: Young CPM leader and Left Democratic Front (LDF) candidate in the September 5 Puthuppally bypoll, Jaick C Thomas, believes that the perceived sympathy wave in the constituency following the death of its 53-year MLA Oommen Chandy will not be enough for the victory of his opponent Chandy Oommen.
To the sceptics, a confident Jaick points to the figures of the previous assembly as well as local body elections.
“It is not going to be a walkover for the United Democratic Front. If you analyse the results of the 2016 and 2021 assembly polls, you will see the UDF's victory margin was only 9,044 votes in 2021 and 27,000-odd votes in 2016. In 2021, it was the sharpest decline in the victory margin in the history of this constituency. If you look at the local body poll results in the previous elections the sharpest growth of LDF is evident. The common man who looks at the facts and figures of former elections can easily understand that this is not going to be a walk-over for the UDF,” Jaick told Onmanorama during a short break in his busy campaigning at Ayarkunnam panchayat.
Ayarkunnam and Meenadam are the only panchayats where the UDF is in power in the Puthuppally constituency. Jaick’s LDF is in power in all the remaining six panchayats.
Asked if he was ready for the third contest in the Puthuppally bypoll which was announced in less than a month since the death of Oommen Chandy, Jaick spoke like a disciplined party worker.
“Of course, in fact, there's no relevance for such a question for a worker of the Left front. If our front decides a worker should be a candidate in an election, then it's our duty to take up the responsibility and perform our best,” he said.
On his priorities for the constituency, if elected, Jaick highlighted the drinking water crisis in the region. “The question has been put to all the candidates; they all had to say we will solve the drinking water problem. It’s because, in all our panchayats, including Puthuppally, acute water shortage is a major problem. We will start with that and move on to infrastructure development covering schools, hospitals and so on,” he said.
On the series of corruption allegations raised against the LDF government and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Jaick reiterated the LDF’s stance: 'Such allegations have little role to play in the bypoll.'
Listing out several media reports about serious corruption allegations levelled against the chief minister and his cabinet colleagues, the LDF candidate asked, 'Where have they all gone?'
“Allegations are not the central issue in this bypoll. We have all seen how all media reported the CM has a business house in Singapore - Kamala International - named after his partner. Where's that allegation now? It’s not such allegations but core development issues are being discussed here,” he said.
