The first half of the 16th and final session of the 15th Kerala Assembly ended on Thursday with the LDF stealing the advantage.
Right at the start of the session, it had a mass moment. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan patiently listened to Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar rephrasing and redacting the Governor's Address and then, after politely ushering Arlekar out, returned to the House and declared that only the government's version, and not the Governor's, would prevail.

Then, the LDF government presented an 'election special' Budget stuffed with landmark decisions that could potentially sway voters, like free education for arts and science degree students and insurance for school children.
On top of it all, with some help from the High Court, the LDF side made their opponents sound unconvincing in the Sabarimala gold loot scandal.

Anything for the faithful
The UDF, perhaps under the belief that the issue had contributed to the LDF's poor showing in the local body polls, wanted the last Assembly session before the elections to be transformed into a tumultuous theatre where the UDF would be seen fighting without a care for their personal safety to nail CPM leaders involved in the theft of the Lord's gold.

So right from January 22, the first full day after the Governor's address on January 20, it declared non-cooperation with the Speaker over the Sabarimala issue.

Every morning this session, the moment the Speaker walked in, Opposition Leader V D Satheesan would rise up and say: "Sir, as you know, we are on an agitation both inside and outside the Assembly calling for the resignation of Devaswom Minister V N Vasavan and seeking an end to the pressure mounted on the Special Investigation Team by the Chief Minister's office. It will be difficult for us to cooperate."

And then, with a kind of ritualistic precision, the UDF members will troop to the well of the House holding placards and shouting slogans, swarm the base of the Speaker's platform and stretch a long anti-government banner across the Speaker's line of vision.

UDF proposes, Speaker disposes
The UDF demonstration is designed to be provocative, to invite the watch and ward staff to charge at them.

Speaker A N Shamseer said that certain UDF MLAs had used the sticks at the end of the banner stretched across his face to hurt the watch and ward staff. "I know who they are, but I am not disclosing their names, particularly because the elections are near. Don't force me to name them," the Speaker said.

The UDF's intention was to create a sense of chaos, which, on rapidly edited news feeds on mobile and TV screens, might seem like a rough and urgent struggle to bring out the truth. It was also a way to instigate the Speaker into calling off the day. This way, newspaper headlines and breaking news scrolls would say 'Assembly disrupted over Sabarimala issue'.

But Speaker A N Shamseer defiantly went ahead with the day's work, unmindful of the taunts and shouts. He also ordered his watch and ward staff to go easy, denying the UDF any excuse to create mayhem.

At last, the slogan-shouts normally would not last till the House business ended. With no one taking the bait, the UDF MLAs would meekly troop out of the House, accompanied by scattered boos from the ruling side.

This pattern was repeated every day, except on the day of the Governor's Address and the Budget presentation.

Blessing for LDF
Interestingly, the mention of Sabarimala roused the LDF.

One, this UDF uproar over Sabarimala in the Assembly would gobble up media space that would otherwise have been fully devoted to the Payyannur developments that were set off by former CPM area secretary P V Unnikrishnan's allegation that top CPM leaders had stolen from a martyr's fund.

In fact, to limit UDF objections in the Assembly to just Sabarimala, the Speaker summarily rejected a UDF notice calling for a discussion on the CPM's martyr fund scandal.

Two, it would offer the LDF a chance to present Sabarimala-related facts it had dug up against the Congress party and its allies. The LDF benches even challenged the Opposition to move an adjournment motion on the Sabarimala issue.

Why fear debate?
Had the UDF moved an adjournment motion on the Sabarimala issue, the government would have agreed to a debate that would have stretched to three hours, in which more than an hour would be taken up by the replies of ministers and the Chief Minister, in which the names of Congress leaders, including Sonia Gandhi, would be dragged through the dirt.

Even without a discussion, General Education Minister V Sivankutty had said that Sonia Gandhi should be arrested and her house raided for her links to the accused in the Sabarimala gold scandal.

A tactful minister like P Rajeev said that Sonia would be spared of ridicule if only the Congress revealed who took Unnikrishnan Potty and the Bellary-based jeweller Govardhan to Sonia Gandhi. This is checkmate for Congress. The reason why the party favoured disorder over orderly debate in the Assembly.

On Thursday, the Speaker was heard rubbing salt into the UDF's wounds. "The government has informed that it is ready for a discussion on the Sabarimala gold scandal. What is it that is stopping you from agreeing to it," he told the slogan-shouting UDF. "Disruption is not an option. Debate and discussion are the hallmarks of a healthy democracy," he said.

Bail conundrum
Unfortunately for the UDF, its Sabarimala ploy was weakened by certain observations of the High Court division bench that monitors the SIT probe. The Opposition leader's principal argument was that the accused were getting statutory bail because of the SIT's failure to file a chargesheet even after 90 days.

"Once the accused are out on bail, they will destroy the evidence, and eventually there will be no Sabarimala case left to solve," Satheesan said in the Assembly on Thursday.

Excise and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M B Rajesh on Thursday gleefully pointed out the observations of the High Court division bench on February 4. "The Opposition Leader should possess extraordinary guts to make such a statement in the House even after what the High Court had said," Rajesh said.

While hearing BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar's plea to transfer the Sabarimala case to the CBI, the division bench said that the grant of statutory bail to the accused after the 90-day remand period would not derail the investigation. Further, it said the probe was progressing in the right direction.

Bully, termites and Sreenivasan
Rajesh likened Satheesan to a character in a Sreenivasan movie who utters words inappropriate for a particular moment and gets roundly slapped for it. He said the High Court's remarks should put the Opposition Leader in his place, like the character in the Sreenivasan movie. "The Opposition leader thinks he is bigger than even the High Court division bench," Rajesh said.

Also, the High Court division bench monitoring the probe did not seem to share the opposition leader's concern that the Chief Minister's office was bullying the SIT.

What prompted Satheesan's charge was the inclusion of two police officers in the SIT: Sreekanth, Deputy Superintendent of Police, NRI Cell, Police Headquarters, Thiruvananthapuram, and Sethunath, Inspector of Police, Chombala Police Station, Kozhikode Rural. The UDF allegation was that they were government spies deputed to leak information from the 'High Court'-controlled SIT.

But the High Court, in its interim order on January 19, instructed the State Police Chief to provide "promptly and without administrative delay" all personnel and logistical support sought by the SIT.

In the Assembly, the LDF members pointed to this 'CM bullying SIT' charge and the HC's seeming indifference to it as proof that Satheesan was deliberately twisting facts.

It also did not help the Congress cause that the division bench had taken serious note of the SIT's finding that a supposedly concrete flagpole ('kodimaram') was removed and a new one installed in 2017, when Congress's Prayar Gopalakrishnan was TDB president, on the pretext that it was infested with termites.

Congress was turned into an object of ridicule in the Assembly this session for allegedly claiming that a concrete structure was eaten away by termites. The Chief Minister, too, referred to it in the Assembly.

It felt like the LDF had a ball in the House, making fun of the Congress on the Sabarimala issue.