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By-elections as political pointers

A defeat at the hands of a friend-turned-foe hurts more than any loss to a traditional rival. For the Shiv Sena, the hammering it took from Narayan Rane in the Malvan Assembly constituency must have caused greater distress than the failure to wrest the Mumbai North-West Lok Sabha seat from the Congress. With a victory margin of 63,000-plus votes, Mr. Rane — a former Sena Chief Minister who is now the Revenue Minister in the Vilasrao Deshmukh Ministry — ensured that the Sena candidate, Parshuram Uparkar, lost his deposit in the by-election. While he was expected to win in his home constituency, the victory margin shows that the Sena is vulnerable in its Konkan stronghold. Mr. Rane has proved he is not a mere creation of the Sena, and that he is a real force in the region. For Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, this could be traumatic. Mr. Rane walked out of the Sena over differences with the Sena executive president, Uddhav Thackeray, and his huge victory is bad news for those wanting to end dissidence in the party. However, the Congress can take little credit for his win. By inducting Mr. Rane, who made his name in the Sena through his strong-arm methods, the Congress leadership displayed rank political opportunism. Mr. Rane typified the Sena's brand of extreme chauvinist politics, but the Congress had no qualms about using him to make inroads into its rival's bastion. In comparison with Malvan, the battle in Mumbai North-West, where Priya Dutt easily held her celebrated father Sunil Dutt's seat within the family, was a tame affair. But the 172,000 margin of victory is significant as a political pointer.

In Kerala, the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha by-election provided fresh evidence, if any were needed, of the hopeless position of the United Democratic Front led by the Congress. The Left Democratic Front, headed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which swept the Lok Sabha contest in the State in May 2004, and the local body elections in September this year, won comfortably by polling more than 50 per cent of the total votes. The Communist Party of India candidate, Pannyan Raveendran, routed V.S. Sivakumar of the Congress, improving upon the party's 2004 victory margin of 54,000 votes by approximately 20,000 votes. With six months to go for the Assembly election, the UDF might as well concede the battle at this stage. The LDF benefited from the support of the Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran); in addition to bringing in some votes, this might soften the resistance within the front to the accommodation of the breakaway Congress group. On the other side, the UDF gained from the transfer of votes from the Bharatiya Janata Party, whose vote share has dropped considerably, but this made little difference to the outcome. Clearly, the LDF would have won without the support of the DIC(K), and the Congress could not have caught up even with full support from the BJP.

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