KOCHI: The ‘Welfare Party-UDF deal’, which had created much heat and dust in the state during the 2020 local body polls, has once again become a major weapon in the LDF’s arsenal as assembly elections near. The ‘understanding’, which played out as an embarrassment for the UDF and a boon for the CPM, had paid rich dividends for the latter in the elections to local bodies.
What provoked the CPM this time was the Welfare Party’s decision to field only 19 candidates in select assembly constituencies, as against the 41 seats it had contested in the 2016 polls. The CPM has interpreted this as a strategy to help the UDF win more seats.“It is quite evident that the Welfare Party wants to help the UDF in the assembly elections, but there is a difference of opinion within the party when it comes to offering unconditional support to the Congress-led front.
It is to overcome this opposition that the party has fielded candidates in a few constituencies, where its presence could not make any impact,” said CPM Kozhikode district committee member K T Kunhikannan. He cited Vengara as an example, where he said the Welfare Party has fielded a candidate to prevent dissident votes from going to the CPM because many of its cadre were against this alliance. “In Thiruvambady, where it usually gets maximum votes in the state, Welfare Party has not fielded a candidate. This indicates that the party is hell-bent on defeating the CPM,” he said.
Kunhikannan, who has written a book against Welfare Party’s parent organisation Jamaat-e-Islami, alleged many Facebook profiles campaigning for UDF were that of Welfare Party members. “They comment under my posts, trying to paint CPM as anti-Muslim,” he said.Meanwhile, Welfare Party state secretary Sajid Khalid said the party was yet to make a decision on whom to support in constituencies not contested by the party. “We will especially scrutinise the segments wherein the BJP has a chance of winning. In such places, we will vote for the party that can defeat the BJP,” he said. Sajid said the party fielded only 19 candidates this time because it wanted to limit electoral fights. “We will announce the party’s stand in other constituencies this week,” he said.
Jamaat-e-Islami has also intensified its ideological campaign against the CPM, as part of which Jamaat secretary Sheikh Muhammad Karakkunnu came up with a 25-part series on Facebook to respond to the allegations raised by Kunhikannan in his book.
“We were forced to pay to the CPM back in the same coin as the party was raising baseless allegations against us. We had stopped any attempt to critically engage with Marxists and Communists back in 1980s. But we had to resume a counterattack because we saw that the CPM was speaking the Sangh Parivar’s language,” Karakkunnu said. He said the party took the decision to support the UDF in 2019 as a strategy to stop BJP from coming to power. “We have not taken any such decision for the assembly polls. But we think keeping Pinarayi Vijayan out of power would be beneficial for state as well as CPM. Otherwise, Pinarayi will be the state’s last Communist CM,” he said.