Kerala - Kozhikode   

Drinking water crisis major poll issue in Kasaragod

R. Madhavan Nair

KOZHIKODE: The blistering heat sweeping the Kasaragod Assembly constituency is very much the same in its intensity as the political heat generated by electioneering, which enters the last leg for the May 3 polling.

As in the past elections, this time also Kasaragod will witness a triangular contest. Besides the traditional rivals the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the United Democratic Front (UDF), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is also a major force in this constituency.

In the limelight of the election is the soft-spoken non-controversial Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader C.T. Ahmed Ali who has an enviable and unbroken string of six victories in a row from Kasaragod in Assembly polls.

Mr. Ahmed Ali had agreed to be a candidate only when he was asked by his leadership to contest since it wanted to ensure victory from Kasaragod this time also and it thought he could do it.

Challenging Mr. Ahmed Ali's bid for a seventh win are N.A. Nellikunnu, the LDF-supported candidate of Indian National League (INL) who had contested before, and V. Ravindran, Kasaragod district general secretary and national council member of the BJP.

Hopes of a win are running high in the BJP camp, since the party candidate had finished second in 2001 Assembly elections pushing the CPI(M) to the third spot.

The BJP had bagged nearly 30 per cent of the votes polled against the UDF's 47 per cent while CPI(M)'s share was only 20 per cent in that election. Mr. Ahmed Ali had won by a comfortable margin of 17,995 votes.

In the Lok Sabha election, the UDF candidate had secured a lead of 13,688 in the Kasaragod Assembly segment even though the LDF had won the Kasaragod Lok Sabha constituency. The impression the BJP campaigners give is that the contest on May 3 in Kasaragod is between Mr. Ravindran and Mr. Ahmed Ali.

The LDF is unmoved by Mr. Ahmed Ali's popularity. The LDF-INL camp is supported by the People's Democratic Party (PDP) which has launched a high-pitched campaign to highlight the plight of its leader Abdul Nasir Maudany languishing in a Coimbatore jail.

An announcement from a PDP campaign in the suburbs of Kasaragod town said though it was true that Mr. Maudany was arrested when the LDF was in power, his imprisonment was due to a conspiracy by the UDF Government.

The announcer alleged the UDF Government had promised Tamil Nadu Government favourable action in the Mullaperiyar Dam dispute if in return it promised not to release Mr. Maudany.

The poor quality of drinking water supplied in the constituency is also a recurring theme in the campaign against the sitting MLA.

Anti-UDF campaigners never miss a chance to highlight water scarcity as one of Mr. Ahmed Ali's `failures'.

``He is making us drink salt water though he has been Kasaragod MLA for nearly a quarter of century," say campaigners of the BJP and the LDF.

Ahmed Ali, however, contends that he had been trying to speed up Kasaragod's development and says a number of bridges and the LBS College of Engineering at Mooliyar are among his major achievements.

Nellikunnu, State treasurer of the INL, describes the last 25 years of Kasaragod's history as "the lost years" since Mr. Ahmed Ali who has been MLA during that period "has done nothing for development of the region".

The hardships facing the constituency's large number of areca farmers is also cited as another lapse on the part of the MLA to find remedies for his voters' problems.

"There are no transport bus services after 8.30 p.m. towards the eastern side; there are no good government hospitals either," he said.

The dispute over lack of development in Kasaragod generates heated debate, but all would agree that the political complexion of the constituency has not changed in the last quarter of a century.

With only a few hours left for closure of the campaigning, the UDF appears to have a clear edge over its main rivals in Kasaragod constituency.

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