Periya double murder: Poll panel not just disqualifies CPM leader but strips voting rights too

Kasaragod: The Kerala State Election Commission has stripped CPM Kasaragod district committee member and former Kanhangad Block Panchayat president K Manikandan (45) of his voting rights after he was sentenced to five years in prison for freeing a party worker, accused of murdering Youth Congress workers Kripesh and Sarathlal P K, from police custody.

A Special CBI Court in Ernakulam convicted and sentenced him on January 3. His disqualification from holding elected office took effect automatically, but Manikandan delayed stepping down, resigning as president and member of Kanhangad Block Panchayat only on July 21 to avoid a byelection. (A byelection is required if a seat remains vacant for more than six months.)

Manikandan then approached the Election Commission with an affidavit, asking to drop the disqualification proceedings since he had already resigned. However, State Election Commissioner A Shajahan ruled that resignation does not absolve him of disqualification from public office.

At first, Manikandan argued before the Commission that both his sentence and conviction had been suspended by the high court, and that suspension of conviction protects elected members from disqualification.

The Commission gave him two weeks to produce the high court’s order. Two weeks later, he filed another affidavit admitting the high court had suspended only his sentence, not his conviction.

The CPM and its leaders have consistently claimed in public speeches that the high court had also suspended Manikandan’s conviction, arguing there was no merit in the trial court’s judgment. In reality, the High Court suspended only the five-year sentence, pointing out that appeal hearings in criminal cases faced a backlog of over seven years, and his case might not be heard before his jail term ended.

The Election Commission cited Section 8(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which states: "A person convicted of any offence and sentenced to imprisonment for not less than two years shall be disqualified from the date of conviction and shall continue to be disqualified for a further period of six years since his release."

It also relied on Section 31 of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act, which bars anyone convicted under certain election offences or sentenced to more than two years from voting, contesting, or holding office in a panchayat for six years from the date of release from prison.

This means Manikandan cannot vote or contest elections until at least 2038, given the delay of seven years in hearing his appeal and the five years he spent in jail (if the appeal is dismissed).

To be sure, he resigned from the Pakkam division seat only after Congress leader Adv M K Baburajan (Periya ward, Kanhangad Block) petitioned the Commission seeking his disqualification.

In the Periya double murder case, the CBI court sentenced 10 CPM workers to life imprisonment for conspiracy and the killing of Periya's Youth Congress workers Kripesh and Sarath Lal on February 17, 2019.

The same court also handed five-year prison terms to four CPM leaders -- Manikandan, groomed by the party as a future MLA, former Udma MLA and party's district secretariat member K V Kunhiraman (62), Raghavan Vellutholi (54), and K V Bhaskaran (58) -- for freeing an accused from police custody. Among them, only Manikandan was in public office. Recently, the LDF government nominated Kunhiraman as vice-chairperson of the Kannur-based Kerala Folklore Academy.