How Anthoor, CPM secretary's hometown, other CPM bastions took down Taliparamba’s 49-year red citadel

Kannur: In Taliparamba, the first signs that the CPM cadre had pulled the rug from under the leadership in the Kerala assembly elections 2026 came from Kuttiyeri village in Pariyaram grama panchayat, one of the party’s safest pockets. Kuttiyeri has around 11,000 voters, overwhelmingly Left-leaning. In Kuttiyeri ward, in the local body polls, the LDF had polled 895 votes, while the Muslim League managed only 197.

So when counting for the assembly elections began on Monday, May 4, the UDF camp was bracing for a heavy opening blow. Leaders expected CPM candidate P K Shyamala to open with a lead of nearly 5,000 votes from Kuttiyeri. Instead, after 11 booths were counted in the first round, Shyamala’s lead stood at just 809 votes. In 2021, her husband, and now CPM state secretary, M V Govindan, had opened with a lead of 3,895 votes after Round 1.

“That was the first evidence of the undercurrent in Taliparamba. ‘Mashe’ kept saying there was an undercurrent, but until then, we had no way to measure it. We just trusted him,” said Saraswathi P K, Congress block committee president.

What followed was the unravelling of one of the CPM’s safest citadels. Rebel candidate T K Govindan ‘Mashe’, who walked out of the CPM accusing the leadership of nepotism and authoritarianism after Shyamala’s candidature was announced, went on to defeat her by 12,551 votes. It was a historic upset.

In Payyannur too, CPM whistleblower V Kunhikrishnan created history by defeating sitting MLA and party insider T I Madhusoodanan by 7,487 votes, a first for a non-CPM candidate.

The only time a Congress or Congress-backed candidate had won in Taliparamba was in 1970. Since 1977, the constituency had remained firmly red for 49 years.

In 2016, CPM’s James Mathew had won by 40,617 votes with a 56.95% vote share. In 2021, Shyamala’s husband and now party secretary, M V Govindan, retained the seat, but the cracks had already begun to show. His vote share dropped to 52.14%, and the victory margin nearly halved to 22,689 votes.

This time, the undercurrent turned into a tsunami. Shyamala’s vote share dropped another 11 percentage points to 41%, while Govindan polled 47.53%.

Even in its strongest pockets, the CPM’s leads collapsed.

In Pariyaram panchayat, the LDF lead was just 1,700. But Chapparapadavu panchayat, controlled by the UDF, reversed the trend. Though the LDF controls 11 of the 16 wards in Kurumathur panchayat, that did not reflect in the votes polled by Shyamala.

By Round 9, counting had almost concluded in Taliparamba municipality, which is again controlled by the UDF (17 divisions for the UDF, 15 for the LDF, and 3 for the BJP). By then, Govindan’s lead had surged to 18,628 votes.

The next two rounds were polling booths of Anthoor municipality, the hometown of P K Shyamala and her husband, M V Govindan. The CPM controls the municipality with an iron fist. All 29 wards are controlled by the party, and several of them do not even see a contest.

Around 21,000 votes were polled in Anthoor, which has around 4,000 UDF votes and 2,000 BJP votes. The LDF was expected to poll the remaining 15,000 votes and reduce T K Govindan’s lead to around 3,600 votes.

But after Anthoor was counted in Round 11, T K Govindan still enjoyed a lead of 10,069 votes. That had almost sealed Shyamala’s fate.

“Heading into Mayyil panchayat, we were expecting a lead of only 2,000 votes in the best-case scenario,” said Saraswathi, T K Govindan’s campaign manager and former Kannur district panchayat member.

But by then, the CPM cadre had scripted Shyamala’s downfall.

Mayyil and Kuttiattoor are two CPM bastions, where 29 of the 37 wards are controlled by the party. But voters in these two panchayats also overwhelmingly voted against Shyamala. T K Govindan said he expected Mayyil to support his cause because he had spent considerable time helping build the party there during his 25 years as the party’s area secretary.

Kolachery, a UDF pocket, added more votes to Govindan’s kitty. The last round was Malappattam, T K Govindan’s home panchayat. It has around 6,400 votes, of which only 1,400 are UDF votes. The CPM controls 13 of the 14 wards, and three of them do not see a contest. Yet, Shyamala got a lead of only 600 votes in Malappattam.

T K Govindan’s rebellion was rooted in a direct challenge to the party leadership. The senior-most member of the CPM’s Kannur district secretariat alleged that Shyamala’s candidature had been opposed at every stage -- in the district secretariat, district committee, and even the Taliparamba assembly committee -- but was still pushed through because she was the wife of state secretary M V Govindan.

In the run-up to the election, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the media that Shyamala’s name was proposed by the district committee and that she was the best woman candidate for the party. T K Govindan hit back, saying that if Pinarayi had attended any of the district-level meetings, he would not have approved her candidature.

Except for three members, the CPM’s entire Taliparamba assembly committee had opposed her candidature, he claimed. The assembly committee comprises area committee members and local committee secretaries. If the party wanted a woman candidate, they would have proposed the name of N Sukanya, a CPM district committee member and wife of former MLA James Mathew.

When the leadership ignored the dissent, Govindan walked out, and the UDF backed him.

After his victory, Govindan said his fight was never against the party, but against what it had become. “My fight was to protect democratic values within the party. Party leaders had asked, " Who is standing with T K Govindan? I said the answer would come after May 4. Now the people have answered,” he said.

He said his struggle was against authoritarianism and family rule within the party, and that even CPM workers had quietly backed him.

“People want the Communist Party to survive. But they also want it corrected,” he said. The party has not lost. Only the adamant leadership has.