THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In the course of its first assessment after the local body elections, the CPM leadership has been following keenly the inroads made by the saffron party into some of its own strongholds and also of the Opposition UDF. Taking a serious view of the same, the party state leadership is all set to look into every aspect of this development—be it political factors, percentage of vote erosion, scope of vote trade and other plausible factors—in each of the local body seat it lost.
Going by the CPM’s assessment, the BJP could not increase its vote share, which remains at around 15 per cent as in 2015. However, it has had a substantial growth in certain Left strongholds, especially in rural areas. The party will also look into vote erosion and poor performance of LDF candidates in some constituencies where other constituents had contested.
In the coming weeks, the party state secretariat and state committee members will also be present at district and area committee meetings and go through local-level assessments to get a holistic picture that would then be presented before the state panel in February. The state leadership will also present its assessment before the central committee that is to meet in January.
The party observed that the BJP has made inroads into Nair and Ezhava communities in some pockets. “We couldn’t retain a few panchayats where the Left has a strong foothold and should never have lost like in Kollam, Alappuzha, Thrissur and Palakkad. This happened due to the growing influence of the BJP that, in turn, ate into Left votes and favoured other parties. This aspect is being viewed seriously,” said a state leader.
The CPM is of the view that there could be several factors behind this. Leakage of Left votes in regions where the BJP won will be especially looked into. “There are certain block and district panchayat divisions where Left candidates polled a substantial number of votes, but could not win the local panchayats. This may be attributable to candidate-specific factors. We will, however, also analyse whether there was a political shift involved and, if so, the percentage of it.
State leaders will attend district and area committee meets and present the consolidated data before the next state committee,” said a central committee member. The CPM observed that the BJP’s vote share remains more or less static except for Kottayam, Idukki and Malappuram where it dipped, and in southern districts like Kollam and Pathanamthitta, where it saw a slight increase.
“Currently, organisational meetings are on and the party will look at pockets where the BJP has made its presence felt for the first time and analyse it and take corrective measures accordingly. Despite cross-voting by UDF, the BJP could not make any noticeable gains in places like Thiruvananthapuram. In places where there was a direct fight between LDF and BJP, we won,” said party secretary in-charge
A Vijayaraghavan.