Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala’s ruling Left Democratic Front was dealt a debilitating blow in the Lok Sabha poll, with the Communist Party of India Marxist managing just one of the 20 seats in the state, and its coalition partner Communist Party of India being blanked.
Kerala’s tally of 19 seats for the opposition United Democratic Front and a lone seat, Alappuzha, for the LDF, was reminiscent of the elections in 1977 post the Emergency, when India witnessed an anti-Congress wave, while Kerala stood staunchly behind the party.
This time, while the Bharatiya Janata Party swept back to power across the nation, Kerala proved a different kettle of fish with no seats for the BJP.
Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and the LDF were left to wonder just what might have caused a UDF tsunami even as political analysts said the CPM had erred in its management of the floods in August 2018, and more recently angered the majority Hindu community by stretching itself to implement the Supreme Court verdict to allow entry of women into the Sabarimala temple in Pathanamthitta district.
On the other hand, while the Congress was left to lick its wounds in most states of the country, the party president Rahul Gandhi was poised for the biggest majority ever from a Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala.
He could also feel happy that Remya Haridas, one of the young Congress leaders he had hand-picked to contest from Alathur, trounced CPM’s P.K. Biju by over 100,000 votes.
The UDF was widely expected to win over the Left this time, but even the most optimistic leaders in the UDF camp had not expected a 19-1 victory. At the time of allotment of seats, some Congress candidates had even grumbled about their allotments, but they ended up winning.
The BJP’s hopes of a Lok Sabha member from Kerala were denied again, with the two likely candidates to win — Kummanam Rajasekharan in Thiruvanantapuram and K. Surendran in Pathanamthitta — failing to make the cut.
Rajasekharan, who had resigned the governorship of Mizoram to join the poll fray, was defeated by incumbent MP, Shashi Tharoor in Thiruvananthapuram, while Surendran who had nursed high hopes of capitalising on the Sabarimala issue in the Pathanamthitta constituency, could only come third behind Congressman Anto Antony and CPM’s Veena George.
Kerala seats break-up:
Total seats: 20
UDF 19 (Congress 15, IUML 2, KC (M) 1, RSP 1)
LDF 1 (CPM 1)
