THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Being a Sunday, K S Sabarinadhan and C Sivankutty, UDF and NDA candidates, respectively, in Aruvikkara assembly constituency were busy hopping from one marriage venue to another trying to meet as many voters as possible. But LDF candidate J Steephen visited on foot Dalit residents of Luthergiri Church Colony near Aryanad which is predominantly a Congress stronghold.
The Aruvikkara assembly constituency came into being in 2008 following delimitation. It was carved out of the previous Aryanad constituency and some parts of the Nedumangad constituency. Aruvikkara has been a citadel of the Congress for the last three decades, but the recent civic body elections saw the LDF winning one out of eight panchayats in the segment. Former speaker G Karthikeyan had won the Aryanad seat consecutively from 1991 to 2001 and the Aruvikkara seat in 2006 and 2011. Following his untimely demise in 2015, his son, Sabarinadhan, a former senior manager with Tata Trusts, Mumbai, joined politics and won the byelection by a margin of 10,128 votes, defeating CPM’s M Vijayakumar and BJP’s O Rajagopal.
In the 2016 assembly elections, 37-year-old Sabarinadhan, who is also the state Youth Congress vice-president, improved the victory margin to 21,314 votes. TNIE bumped into him at RK Auditorium at Kuttichal where he was seen mingling with guests at a nikkah ceremony of a local youth. “The people here don’t see me as a legislator, but as a man next door. Despite having limitations as an Opposition MLA, I have done a lot of development activities and my work speaks for itself. My tag line is ‘development, my presence and compassionate care’. I don’t show any election gimmick. I am always available here and the people have also reciprocated with warmth,” said Sabarinadhan. That could be seen as Sabarinadhan’s poster could be seen at the entrance of almost all houses at Luthergiri Church Colony where 400 Dalits live.
However, that has not deterred CPM candidate Steephen from seeking the support of the colony residents. The majority of women were busy cleaning the adjoining plantation area under the MGNREGA scheme on Sunday. Steephen was fielded in Aruvikkara at a time when he was serving as the CPM’s area secretary in Kattakada. The Left camp has been highlighting the 52-year-old Steephen’s meteoric rise in the party from an orphan after he lost his parents at a young age. After leading the J V Vilanilam protest against the then UDF government’s move to delink the pre-degree course from the universities and create a separate board in 1986 during his college days, Steephen entered the electoral politics by contesting to Kattakada grama panchayat council in 1995. He became the youngest panchayat president then.
In the 2015 local body elections, Stephen became the block panchayat member from Vellanad. “We failed in the last parliament elections, but we overcame that in the recent local body elections. Hence I am confident that the recent victory will give us an impetus as the voters here are happy with the LDF government’s policies. When I met the people in all eight panchayats, they expressed happiness at the way in which the state government had provided free kits and increased the welfare pension amount,” said Steephen. Though the main fight is between UDF and LDF in Aruvikkara, a host of BJP national leaders including Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb and Union Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur had campaigned for C Sivankutty. This is the second outing for the 58-year-old BJP state secretary in Aruvikkara where he had managed to poll only 7,694 votes in the 2011 elections.