Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Onus on State leaders

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Congress High Command on Tuesday confirmed the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) candidates’ list nominating A.A. Sukhoor, Dominic Presentation and A.P. Abdullah Kutty for the Alappuzha, Ernakulam and Kannur Assembly seats respectively for the November 7 byelections.

The High Command clearance sticks to the script prepared by the Congress leaders in the State, cutting loose from the traditional pattern of selecting candidates on the basis of communal equations.

All along, the senior leaders have been emphasising on candidates’ winnability as the main criteria, which finally got the seal of approval from Delhi. The burden of winning the Assembly seats squarely lies on the shoulders of KPCC president Ramesh Chennithala and Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy. This is because of the calculated move that the Congress leadership took in fielding three MLAs for the Lok Sabha in order to perk up the numbers that the Congress could send to Parliament.

With the three Parliament seat in the Congress pocket and the general perception about a “perfect climate” for victory prevailing, these two leaders now have the responsibility of proving that the Lok Sabha victory was not a political aberration. The decision to field Mr. Abdulla Kutty from Kannur is perhaps the most interesting. The former MP was expelled from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections for holding views on development and hartals that did not jell with the party. The Congress party hopes to send a clear message that it was willing to accommodate CPI(M) dissenters to take on that party in one of its strongholds. The Congress leaders have taken a calculated risk of fielding two Muslim candidates in constituencies which have sizable Muslim votes that had moved away from the Congress party in recent years.

Mr. Sukhoor, who is known to be close to Mr. Chennithala, was once Alappuzha municipal chairman. Since the Assembly constituency is contiguous to the municipality, Mr. Sukhoor is on a good turf. For Mr. Presentation, the Ernakulam ticket is a dream-come-true. He had lost out on earlier occasion to contest from this constituency, which he considers his turf, because factional dictates always allowed Karunakaran men to dominate the constituency for decades.

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