KASARAGOD: Congress state president Mullappally Ramachandran's last-day appeal to the LDF supporters to vote for the UDF in Manjeshwar "to stop the BJP" has not gone down well with the LDF and the BJP.
The UDF candidate AKM Ashraf endorsed the view of Ramachandran. "The LDF is not in the picture in Manjeshwar and so all the secular voters should come together and elect me and defeat the BJP," said Ashraf.
LDF candidate and CPM leader VV Rameshan said Ramachandran had no sense of Tulunadu and was talking gibberish. "The LDF made considerable progress during the campaign. Today, the fight is between the LDF and the BJP. Mullappally's appeal comes due to his sense of defeat," he said.
BJP state president K Surendran, who is the NDA's candidate in Manjeshwar, said the souls of Sarath Lal and Kripesh would not forgive the Congress for trying to strike up an alliance with the LDF. "Mullappally's appeal is a shameless begging of votes. It exposed the helplessness of the Congress," he said and added that the Congress leader made a public appeal for LDF vote sensing a defeat at the hands of the NDA in Manjeshwar.
Ramachandran held his ground and said "no one should shed crocodile tears" over Youth Congress workers Sarath Lal and Kripesh, who were murdered allegedly by CPM workers in February 2019.
He, however, refused to accept the support of the SDPI, the political outfit of the People's Front of India, a far-right Islamic organisation. The SDPI had publicly announced its support to Ashraf. The LDF had struck regional understandings with the SDPI in 72 assembly constituencies, he added.
Veteran Congress leader Oommen Chandy said the UDF did not need any outside support to win in Manjeshwar.
Congress leader in Manjeshwar Manjunath Alva said the ground reality in the constituency was different from other places. "Here, only 10% of the voters are affiliated to political parties, and so such an appeal will not have much impact. The UDF has reached out to all sections of society and will register a comfortable win in Manjeshwar," he said.
Manjeshwar is seeing a tight three-cornered fight. In 2016, Surendran lost in the constituency by 89 votes to Indian Union Muslim League's PB Abdul Razak. However, in the by-election held in 2019, necessitated by the death of Razak, the IUML defeated the BJP by nearly 8,000 votes. The LDF has a 26% vote share in the constituency. In 2006, it came from the third position to win the constituency, pushing the IUML to the third position.