Balagopal’s fresh gloss outshines Potty’s faded image in Kottarakkara

Onmanorama poll meter tracks 12 closely-fought constituencies across different phases of campaign: Nemom, Manjeshwar, Palakkad, Kunnathunad, Pala, Kottarakkara, Peravoor, Thripunithura, Ambalappuzha, Taliparamba, Payyanur and Nattika. This is the final part on Kottarakkara, where Onmanorama captures emerging trends from ground-level feed. Click to read the first and second parts here.

After the Chief Minister, it is the Finance Minister who is closely identified with a government. So if there is an anti-incumbency sentiment after 10 years of unbroken LDF rule, Kottarakkara is where it would have been felt. 

But in this landlocked constituency, anti-incumbency is hard to come across as untarred roads. Here, the finance minister and CPM candidate K N Balagopal is considered a top performer. 

“Forget Kottarakkara's development. See what he did to the economy. Everyone said there was a crisis, but he pumped in money for big development projects and also welfare,” said Parakkadavu Mathew, a provision store owner in Ezhukone panchayat, a UDF bastion. 

Performer number one
On April 1, Balagopal called a press conference in Kottarakkara to reinforce this image. “When the accounts for 2025-26 fiscal year were closed on March 31, the state's total plan fund utilisation is 106.46 per cent. This figure is a slap on the face of those who are spreading the lie that the government is cutting down spending,” he said.

Onmanorama spoke to nearly 40 voters in the constituency, including in areas like Ezhukone panchayat and municipality areas like Pazhayatheruvu and Pulamon where the UDF has an upper hand and Neduvathur where the BJP dominates, and not a single person disapproved of his performance.

At the most, some were half-hearted in patting Balagopal's back. “Balagopal could do all this because he was a senior minister. Aisha Potty had done more even without being a minister,” said Roy, a juice stall owner in Pazhayatheruvu. “Any well-meaning MLA can do what Balagopal has done. So we are under no compulsion to suffer a third LDF government,” Sekharan, who was found reading a newspaper in front of the library at Vayanasala Junction, said. 

All this means not just Balagopal is winning or that Congress candidate and former CPM MLA Aisha Potty will find it virtually impossible to draw Left-inclined votes like G Sudhakaran seems to be capable of in Ambalappuzha.

This could also mean that Opposition leader V D Satheesan's 100-plus seats claim could have been the result of a grave misdiagnosis. Satheesan's prognosis is based on the assumption of high anti-incumbency. 

Myth of anti-incumbency
Fact is, anti-incumbency is a pandemic, not an endemic municipal concern like filthy public toilets or dysfunctional street lights whose impact on voter behaviour will be contained within a small geographical area. If there was anti-incumbency, the virus would not have spared Kottarakkara. 

Balagopal's high public rating has effectively neutralised Congress candidate Aisha Potty's universal appeal. 

All the people Onmanorama talked to had nothing against Potty, too. Even the CPM's Kulakkada local committee secretary Sreekumar conceded that she was an “excellent MLA”. “But she could do all that because she had the party's support, because we worked day and night for her,” Sreekumar said.

Out of sight, out of mind
There are two other psychological factors that Potty has to contend with. The 'out of sight' syndrome and the anti-defection sentiment.

Voters seem to resent her defection to the Congress. “It was the CPM that made her. Before that she was just an ordinary person, like any of us. Now she has ditched the party that made her,” said Deepu who runs Chettaayees at Kalayapuram junction. Several voters expressed the same sentiment.

Also, she seemed to have withdrawn from public life. Potty ceased being an MLA in 2021 and her image, though not sullied, is like old election posters that were once glossy but have now faded to an unrecognisable paleness. 

Potty told Onmanorama that Balagopal had deliberately kept her out of all public events, “even from the inauguration of projects that I had initiated.” The CPM leadership, in turn, claimed that Potty was “unfailingly” invited to these events but had repeatedly declined to attend citing health reasons. 

“I don't think the young voters would even recognise her. She was absent from all major public programmes in the last five years. She might have been good but that is an old story. It is like those old utensils I have dumped in my storeroom at the back and is now covered in cobwebs,” said Vikraman, who runs a tea shop near the CPM party office in Kulakkada.

Gossip plan
Bravado aside, the CPM is deeply worried about Potty's wide acceptability in the constituency. Why else would the party bother to unleash a whisper campaign against a candidate whose image is covered in cobwebs.

The 'secret' came to us in the words of the CPM Kulakkada local committee secretary Sreekumar. “She first went to the BJP and only when that failed to work out that she opted for the Congress,” he said with a seemingly sense of outrage. 

Later we asked four women in Kulakkada about Aisha Potty. All of them said she was an opportunist who was wiling to join forces even with the BJP. When asked from where they got this information, all of them said: “We heard it from party men.”

Electorally, it makes sense to antagonise Kulakkada voters against Potty. She is said to be hugely popular in the area. In 2016, when she won by a margin of 40,811 votes, Potty's lead in Kulakkada segment alone was over 9000. Last time, Balagopal's lead in the area was just about 900. 

Will BJP favour CPM?
The BJP candidate, R Resmi, also brings hope for the CPM. Resmi was Congress's face in Kottarakkara till Aisha Potty became Congress candidate, and she was also Balagopal's Congress challenger in 2021. “That Resmi will eat into Congress votes is pure common sense,” LC secretary Sreekumar said. 

Balagopal's performance as minister and MLA, anti-defection sentiment and a bit of manufactured hate against Potty, and the BJP candidate's capability to draw votes from the Congress leader will see Balagopal through.
Click to read the first and second parts here.