Kerala - Kochi   

Ernakulam retains its shape

KOCHI: Ernakulam is one of the few Lok Sabha constituencies in Kerala whose contours have not been drastically redrawn by the Delimitation Commission in the recent national shuffling of electoral constituencies.

Of course, it has lost an old Assembly segment, Aluva, and some panchayats but this has been made up by the addition of three panchayats. The new Ernakulam constituency consists of the Assembly segments of Kalamassery, Paravur, Vypeen, Kochi, Thripunithura, Ernakulam and Thrikkakara. Of these, Kalamassery, Vypeen, Kochi and Thrikkakara are new Assembly segments created by the commission by adding to and deleting from the previous (existing) ones. Previously, Ernakulam covered the Paravur, Njarackal, Ernakulam, Mattancherry, Palluruthy, Thripunithura and Aluva Assembly segments.

Kalamassery gets a sizable chunk of the erstwhile Aluva; Vypeen retains most of Njarackal; Kochi has substantial parts of Mattancherry and Palluruthy and Thrikkakara has been handed parts of Thripunithura and Aluva. The reconfigured Aluva segment comprises Aluva municipality and the grama panchayats of Chengamanad, Choornikkara, Edathala, Kanjoor, Keezhmad, Nedumbassery and Sreemoolanagram. Aluva is now part of the newly-created Chalakudy Lok Sabha constituency.

While Choornikkara, Edathala and Keezhmad panchayats and Aluva municipality have been taken off the erstwhile Ernakulam and clubbed with Chalakudy, Vadakkekara, Puthanvelikkara (both in Paravur Assembly segment) and Kunnukara (in Kalamassery) panchayats have been added to the Ernakulam parliamentary constituency.

Politicians, of both Left Democratic Front and United Democratic Front, feel that Aluva should have stayed with the Ernakulam Lok Sabha constituency as it is geographically contiguous with Ernakulam.

Sebastian Paul, current Ernakulam MP, contends that these minor alterations would not have any political impact on the constituency.

“The alterations will not have much of a change in terms of the extent of the constituency, number of voters and the political profile of the people,” the three-time LDF-Independent MP said. The Ernakulam Lok Sabha constituency, which covers most of the Greater Cochin Development Area territory, is reckoned as an urban constituency and hence its preferences are slightly different from others. The voters look for not just an ordinary politician in their MP; they want him to be urbane, highly educated, and possibly a professional. Above all, he should be an effective communicator, in English, so that the developmental aspirations of Kerala’s largest city, which hopes to be a ‘smart city,’ can be articulated in the nation’s Parliament. As the city grows, the townspeople’s idea of their representative has changed too. In order to get the green signal of the voters in the coming Lok Sabah election, the political parties will have to take their candidates’ personality and soft skills too into consideration before deciding to field them.

Kochi is home to the headquarters of two of the largest Christian denominations in the State, the Syro-Malabar Church and the Latin Catholic Church, and a strong business community. UDF leaders claim that they will recapture the Ernakulam Lok Sabha constituency in the next election. But they will have to find a candidate who is not just a politician, but an urbane, educated person with a lot of soft skills so that he can fit into the Kochi voter’s idea of their man in the Lok Sabha.

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