THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Congress leadership hopes to garner minority and impartial votes in the Chelakkara and Palakkad Assembly by-election seats.
The Congress votes alone will not help the two candidates, Ramya Haridas and Shafi Parambil respectively to win, this puts the minority and impartial votes crucial for them.
During the 2021 Assembly election, sitting Congress MLA Shafi Parambil won in Palakkad against BJP’s E Sreedharan by a narrow margin of 3859 votes. When the impartial votes favoured metroman Sreedharan, the minority vote consolidation helped Shafi to romp home with a hat trick win from Palakkad.
Congress Working Committee leader Ramesh Chennithala who is also the AICC general secretary in charge of Maharashtra had been keeping a close tab on the campaigning in Palakkad and Chelakkara. He told TNIE that in both these constituencies the secular and impartial votes will be favourable to the UDF.
“I am confident that the UDF candidates will win with a comfortable margin in these two constituencies. A minority consolidation is slated to happen which would put Rahul and Ramya in a comfortable position. The CPM and BJP’s propaganda on the Munambam – Waqf land dispute is not going to affect the voters neither in Palakkad nor Chelakkara”, said Chennithala.
The rival political parties had been targeting the Congress and IUML on the raging Munambam – Waqf land dispute especially on social media platforms. The presence of senior Congress leader K Muraleedharan in Palakkad and Chelakkara benefited the party candidates as the public programmes garnered wide attention. Palakkad MP V K Sreekandan told TNIE that the mega tractor rally comprising 110 tractors which led a march in three agrarian villages of Kannadi, Mathur and Pirayiri panchayats saw large number of farmers and impartial voters lining up on both sides of the road in Palakkad on Monday.
“The Karshaka Raksha March held on Monday highlighted the discrepancies in paddy procurements which have seen the state government pushing the farmers into penury. The price towards it has not been met in the last two years. We are confident that the impartial votes which went in favour of Sreedharan during the last Assembly election will come back to us this time as we have been campaigning against the anti-people friendly policies of the LDF government”, said Sreekandan.
IUML rebel K S Hamza who recently contested on a Left ticket from Ponnani Lok Sabha constituency belongs to Chelakkara. The UDF leadership has been keenly watching whether Hamza’s presence as well as estranged CPM MLA P V Anvar’s Democratic Movement of Kerala candidate N K Sudheer would create any ripples in Chelakkara or not. But they have not left any stone unturned with the party leadership putting up a stellar campaigning in Chelakkara over the last four months to ensure that the Left bastion is wrested from the CPM with a comfortable victory margin with the aid of the secular voters.