LS POLLS

Analysis | How CPM blunders gave Shafi Parambil second highest win in Vadakara

Kozhikode: Vadakara enviably got two of the best candidates fielded in Kerala -- Congress's young Shafi Parambil and former rock star health minister KK Shailaja. Their campaigns, intense and intimate, were also marred by murky allegations of morphed images and forged messages as if misogynistic and communal narrative could sway the constituency. Pollsters predicted a close fight. Some claimed it was a neck-and-neck battle.

Yet on June 4, when the results were announced, Shafi trumped Shailaja, with a margin of 1,15,157 votes, the second biggest in the constituency since 1957. (CPM's P Sathidevi holds the record when she won with a margin of 1,30,589 votes in 2004.)

How did Shafi run away with 49.55 per cent vote share in an election billed as a close contest? To begin with, the Congress made the right move by shifting sitting MP K Muraleedharan, who was facing anti-incumbency, to Thrissur and bringing in Shafi, a three-time sitting MLA from Palakkad, to Vadakara.

"Shafi struck an intimate relationship with the people of Vadakara from the day he landed in the constituency," said political analyst N P Chekkutty. Shafi ran a very successful campaign, fist-bumping his way to the heart of the people. But that does not explain the huge margin in a political constituency such as Vadakara. "I will attribute the big win to the strategic blunders of the CPM," he said.

The blunders Chekkuty was referring to were CPM's allegations that the UDF camp released vulgar images of Shailaja by morphing her photographs, and that UDF resorted to communal campaign by calling her "kafir (infidel female candidate)".

It was a screenshot of a WhatsApp message purportedly written by a leader of Muslim Students' Federation, and widely shared by Facebook pages of CPM on the eve of the polls. The UDF hit back saying the screenshot was fake and doctored by the CPM to polarise the voters.

The MSF leader too approached the High Court seeking proper investigation into the case. "If you raise an allegation which you are not convinced about, it is bound to boomerang on you. That is what happened to CPM," said Chekutty.

He said kafir is a word not heard in the political discourse of Kerala and so people did not believe it was the handiwork of the UDF. "Ultimately, the allegations went in favour of Shafi," he said.

And then on April 5, an explosion while making bomb killed a CPM worker at Panoor in the constituency, which still lives with a wounded psyche because of the brutal murder of CPM dissenter TP Chandrasekharan.

It was a double blow for the CPM because the party was ostensibly reaching out to the Muslim community with its loud campaign against the Citizenship Amendment Act. Though Vadakara has around 35 per cent Muslim voters, it has never elected an MP from the minority community. Neither did any front field a candidate from the minority community before Shafi.

Voters of Vadakara have a rich history of sending socialist leaders to Lok Sabha. Even in the 1984 election, when the Congress did a '400 paar' performance after Indira Gandhi's assassination, Vadakara sent socialist leader and Congress turncoat KP Unnikrishnan to Parliament. The constituency turned red only in 1996 when trade unionist O Bharathan of the CPM ended the 25-year run of K P Unnikrishnan.

It elected its first woman MP in 1998. CPM's AK Premajam, a retired college principal-turned-politician, defeated Congress's PM Suresh Babu by 59,161 votes. She repeated the feat in 1999 against the same rival. In 2004, CPM's P Sathidevi, sister of party strongman P Jayarajan, won from the constituency, with the highest-ever margin.

The CPM's run ended in 2009 when Congress's Mullappally Ramachandran defeated Sathidevi by 56,186 votes. The Congress victory came against the backdrop of CPM dissenter T P Chandrasekharan forming the Revolutionary Marxist Party in Vadakara. After CPM workers and leaders hacked him to death in 2012, RMP grew in strength and resolve and became a close ally of the UDF.

Today, six of the seven assembly segments that make up the Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency are with the LDF, with Vadakara Assembly segment being represented by Chandrasekharan's wife KK Rema. She spearheaded Shafi's campaign.

After ensuring Shafi's victory, she took a dig at Shailaja, saying: "You may return with the hope that people, not religion, will work in Vadakara".

"This is the land of people who want to be human, to talk, to laugh, to touch, to kiss and to keep their smile intact on their faces," Rema wrote. "When you return, please be like that," she said.

Shafi took the same line. "Vadakara spoke politics to those who spoke communalism," he said. "Vadakara will not accept the usage such as 'kafir' and we are not here to divide people in the name of this victory," he said. If the police were diligent, Vadakara would not have been tainted so much, he said.

Despite the big win, the bitter after-taste of the election campaign will remain in Vadakara for long.