After the "unexpected loss" in the 2025 local body polls, SNDP Yogam general secretary Vellappally Natesan seems to be attracting more difficult questions and causing greater resentment than even the LDF leadership.

There is a perception, even within Left circles, that Vellappally's uninhibited expression of Muslim hatred and his camaraderie with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had caused the voters to distance themselves from the LDF this time.

If at all the CPM State Secretariat or State Committee had found any truth in this hypothesis, it has been kept a secret. The Chief Minister's bromance with Vellapally and the CPM's refusal to reprimand the SNDP Yogam supremo or its reluctance to formally disengage from his anti-Muslim vitriol are not to be found among the loss-inducing factors that CPM state secretary M V Govindan listed out before the media on December 29 after the Secretariat and State committee meetings. 

The CM's position, nonetheless, was no secret. He was unwilling to attribute the "unexpected loss" to his comradeship with a community leader who was repeatedly spewing venom at Muslims. Vijayan reasoned that Vellappally himself had said that his utterances were against the Muslim League and not Muslims.

The CM also did not find anything problematic in his decision to reach the Global Ayyappa Sangamam venue along with Vellappally. "I was just offering a lift to an old man," is how the CM described an act that many others felt was loaded with political significance.

The CPI, however, is not ready to extend senior citizen benefits to the SNDP Yogam general secretary. "I would have smiled at him and perhaps would have shook hands. But never would I have taken him in my car," CPI state secretary Binoy Viswam told reporters on Wednesday. 

Vellappally, on the other hand, sought to turn the Global Ayyappa Sangamam car episode into a caste issue. "All of you seem upset that I had got into the car," Vellappally told reporters as he came out of the Sivagiri Pilgrimage Conference on Wednesday. "Would you people have uttered a word if a forward caste man had got into the car with the CM or if a minority person had done that? But when a backward caste man like me got into the car all hell broke loose," he said.

Vellapally berated the CPI for its alleged criticism of the CM during its State Council meeting. "Those who indulge in backstabbing after having enjoyed all the comforts of office for the last 10 years are best called 'Chathiyan chanthumaar'," he said. "You too Brutus is how I feel like saying," he said.

The remark provoked the CPI state secretary. "If he had called us 'Chathiyan Chanthu', that hat will suit him a thousand times more than us. That hat will not fit the CPI's head. No one had deputed Vellappally to assess the performance of the LDF. Vellappally is not the LDF," Viswam said, and then with emphasis added: "Vellappally should not be the LDF." This remark could be interpreted as a sly attack on the CM who even after the local body loss was trying to justify Vellappally.

Nonetheless, Vellappally had more to answer than a car ride with the CM. In April 2025, Vellappally had said that Malappuram was so absolutely taken over by the Muslims that even fresh air was hard to find for the Ezhava community. On Wednesday, too, he said that the SNDP Yogam had acquired land for schools and colleges in Malappuram long ago and was yet to get the clearance to start the work. 

When he was asked whether he had failed to get permission even during the last 10 years of Pinarayi Vijayan's rule, Vellappally suddenly became combative, pushed aside the news channel mikes and stomped away.