THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It is more ‘selective victimisation’ than any ideological differences that is reflected in the resignation of R Selvaraj from the Assembly, which has pushed the CPM top brass into the defensive. It is sweet revenge by him for uprooting him from his home turf in the 2011 Assembly elections and belittling him later in party forums.
Selvaraj’s relation with the party which started on September 1, 1968, when he took the membership officially, turned bitter after the entry of state committee member and his bete noire Anavoor Nagappan into his fiefdom. He was hesitant to accept Neyyattinkara, a constituency with a UDF leaning, in place of Parassala, which was represented by him in the 12th Assembly, when CPM announced the list on March 18, 2011. The party had calculated on winning Parassala by fielding Nagappan as the caste combinations had changed in the constituency after delimitation. This was too much for Selvaraj as Kollayil, his stronghold and native panchayat, was in Parassala. His electoral victories had started from the Eythukondani ward in Kollayil in 1978 and later he became its vice- president as a member of the Kottamam ward. As the area committee secretary of CPM and MLA for five years, he was popular in the constituency. He feared could not repeat 2006 in Neyyatinkara. He found it as a trap laid by the party leadership in connivance with Nagappan for his unceremonious exit with a defeat there.
The state leadership had to intervene at this juncture. Though he accepted the reality reluctantly, he wrested the seat in a fierce battle with Thampanoor Ravi with a majority of 6,702 votes while Nagappan lost to A T George by a narrow margin of 505 votes.
Even a convincing victory at Neyyatinkara could not alleviate the pain of Selvaraj or make him forgive the CPM as the leadership started the witch-hunt in the wake of Nagappan’s defeat. “It was not my victory but the defeat at Parassala that was highlighted in the discussions in the party from the branch committees,” Selavaraj told media at Neyyattinkara while announcing the resignation. He accused the leadership of selectively annihilating those who question its insolence by labelling them as ‘VS loyalists’.
Thus, he who raised the red flag of SFI as its first chairman as a second-year BA political science student in the Dhanuvachapuram VTM NSS College, left the party in dire straits when it is fighting a more crucial battle nearly 300 km away in Piravom.