There was already a feeling that the Congress candidate in Vattiyoorkavu, Veena Nair, had not put up a worthy fight. There were also murmurs that senior leaders in the district were not keen to campaign for Veena.
Evidence has suddenly emerged that could further intensify the suspicion that the Congress was not serious about winning Vattiyoorkavu, which till the CPM's V K Prasanth wrested in the 2019 byelection, was considered a UDF bastion.
Veena Nair's unused campaign posters, fresh tied bundles, have been found with a scrap dealer in Nanthencode in Thiruvananthapuram. “A person who lives nearby brought me these bundles. When I weighed them, it was 50 kg. I gave him Rs 10 for a kg, a total of Rs 500," the scrap dealer told Manorama News.
The poster bundles look like they have come straight from the printing press. The 'paper waste' is said to have reached the dealer on April 8, two days after the elections were over. A clear sign that party workers had not bothered to paste Veena's posters.
Veena Nair told reporters that she had informed both the KPCC president, Mullappally Ramachandran, and opposition leader Rasmesh Chennithala of the incident. "Both of them told me that this was a serious issue and that it would be taken up immediately," Veena said.
Nonetheless, the Congress candidate said she had full support of the local Congress leaders during the campaign. "There were days when I had just two hours of sleep. During these late hours of campaigning, it were local Congress leaders - Mandalam, block and booth presidents - who were with me," she said, and added: "But if anyone had done this on purpose, it would be a serious embarrassment for the party."
Veena's candidature was announced at the last minute, after local Congress leaders insisted that the candidate had to be from Vattiyoorkavu. Even known names like P C Vishnunath and K P Anilkumar, which were bandied about initially, were rejected by local leaders. A top Congress leader said Veena was opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala's candidate. It is also said that the local leaders had another woman candidate in mind.
Right at the start of the campaign, the CPM candidate and sitting MLA V K Prasanth had alleged that there was a secret BJP-Congress deal in Vattiyoorkavu. Prasanth had cited Veena's dull campaign as proof. Then, Veena said it was unbecoming of an MLA to level such a baseless allegation.
On Friday, Veena further said that Prasanth should have first taken into account her political background before levelling such charges. "I am the daughter-in-law of K P Kunhikkannan, a senior Congress leader and a former MLA. Do you think I would be party to a vote-swapping deal," she asked reporters on Friday.
In 2019, Prasanth had won by a margin of 14,438 votes against Congress's K Mohankumar. BJP's S Suresh was a distant third. Prasanth's was considered an upset win as Vattiyoorkavu, which has a predominant Nair population, was held for two consecutive terms by Congress's K Muraleedharan. In 2016, it was CPM's T N Seema who had finished third.
This time it looked like a two-way fight between the CPM and the BJP, between Prasanth and BJP's V V Rajesh. Now, after the discovery of the unused posters, there are strong doubts about the loyalty of core Congress votes.
