Thiruvananthapuram: The UDF's Congress candidate Aryadan Shoukath was sworn in as MLA on Friday but the CPM State Committee that had been meeting for the last three days in Thiruvananthapuram has still not conceded defeat. CPM state secretary MV Govindan nearly claimed that it was the party candidate M Swaraj who had actually won. 

Govindan said the average CPM vote in Nilambur constituency is around 40,000. This was the average of the votes that, according to Govindan, CPM candidates had pocketed whenever they contested in the party symbol from Nilambur, during Assembly and Lok Sabha elections and also by-elections over the years. "From there we cornered 66,660 votes, a massive leap. We actually strengthened our political base," Govindan said.

Sheer numbers are misleading as it masks the proliferation of Nilambur voters over the years. Percentage of votes, therefore, will be a better measure of a party's performance. 

In 1965 and 1967 when K Kunjali of the CPM won, he cornered 41.87 per cent and 62.04 per cent of votes; then, the votes he garnered were just 17,914 and 25,215. Four decades later when independents were rested for a change and P Sreeramakrishnan contested in the party symbol, he lost to Aryadan Muhammad of the Congress. But he had 42 per cent of the votes. The votes he collected then was 69,452, larger than the 66,660 polled in Swaraj's favour this time.

The average voting percentage of CPM candidates in Nilambur till Swaraj came in was nearly 50 per cent (48.67 per cent). But Swaraj's fell to 37.88 per cent.

Yet, Govindan played with numbers that were blind to context. He extrapolated this "vote leap" in Nilambur to the 139 other Assembly constituencies in Kerala and made it seem like Kerala was poised for a Pinarayi wave. "If this is the kind of increase in votes that we are going to win in other Assembly constituencies, just imagine what will happen to the UDF. It will be wiped out," Govindan said. 

A journalist even cheekily asked him who in the party could claim credit for this "victory". Govindan got the dig and laughed sportingly.

Along with this refusal to accept Shoukath's victory is the CPM penchant to play the martyr. 'When it is now clear that a third LDF government is imminent, the mainstream media is trying to give the impression that there are internal problems in the CPM just like in the Congress," Govindan said. 

The state secretary said that reports that he was rebuked - openly by the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and during internal discussions at the CPM State Committee - for his 'We did indeed have association with the RSS' remarks was "utterly baseless". 

"The CM has not uttered a word against me. And some newspapers have said that leaders like Elamaram Kareem and P Rajeev had criticised me at the State Committee meeting. No such thing has happened. Fake news is being deliberately manufactured," Govindan said. 

He said the party had already initiated legal proceedings against news outlets that had published "fake news". "Freedom of speech does not mean that you can ride roughshod over the party," Govindan said.