Chelakkara: If Palakkad assembly constituency is billed as young Congress leader Shafi Parambil's playground because of his three consecutive wins, next-door Chelakkara in Thrissur district is veteran CPM leader KS Radhakrishnan’s cherished turf, where he has been elected five times with enviable victory margins. Shafi brings flair and flamboyance, while Radhakrishnan is understated. Yet, the two leaders command a deep connection with their respective constituencies and unwavering public support. Palakkad and Chelakkara assembly segments are geared up for a byelection because the two incumbent MLAs were elected to the Lok Sabha in the summer election this year.
The two leaders are spearheading the campaigns in their respective constituencies, as retaining these seats has become a matter of prestige for both the Congress-led UDF and the CPM-led LDF. Yet, the two elections present a striking contrast and internal conflicts. In Palakkad, once a red bastion, the CPM is a distant third, and the main fight is between the UDF and the BJP-led NDA.
Chelakkara, created in 1967, has been a constituency reserved for candidates from Scheduled Caste communities. The Congress had a past in the constituency, but since 1996, when the CPM first fielded Radhakrishnan, it has been the numero uno party in Chelakkara. The Congress is betting on its firebrand leader, the former Alathur MP Ramya Haridas (38), to reclaim the seat from the CPM in this byelection slated for November 13. The CPM has launched former MLA Pradeep UR (51) as its candidate. Pradeep represented Chelakkara Assembly constituency from 2016 to 2021 when the CPM gave Radhakrishnan a break and made him CPM's Thrissur District Secretary. The BJP's candidate is K Balakrishnan (48), the vice-president of Thiruvilwamala grama panchayat, one of the nine grama panchayats that make up the Chelakkara Assembly segment. PV Anvar, the mercurial independent MLA from Nilambur who acrimoniously parted ways with the LDF, has also fielded a candidate, adding a curious twist to the Chelakkara race.
How the numbers stack up
Chelakkara has a huge floating vote of around 10 per cent that shifts between the CPM, Congress, and BJP. "It’s hard to predict who will capture that extra 10 per cent vote or their voting pattern. However, LDF holds a comfortable lead here, allowing some leeway to lose that floating vote and still secure a win," said a CPI district council member and election strategist for the LDF. He said that LDF would not win big like Radhakrishnan but it would be an easy win. The UDF camp is not that optimistic. Chelakkara is a hard constituency to pull off, he said. On top of it, the Congress is saddled with a lot of internal conflicts in Chelakkara, he said. "In Palakkad, you can see the smoke. Here you cannot," he said. Three months before the byelection was declared, the party deputed Congress state vice-president VP Sajeendran and general secretary PM Niyas in Chelakkara to iron out the differences the local leadership had with Ramya.
"In Palakkad, we have leaders such as Shafi Parambil and (Palakkad MP) VK Sreekandan to lead the campaign. In Chelakkara, we don't have such local leaders," he said. But Congress is hopeful because, in the recent Lok Sabha election, Ramya Haridas narrowed the CPM's lead in the Chelakkara assembly segment to 5,173 votes from 39,400 votes in the 2021 assembly election. "We are heavily dependent on Ramya Haridas's charm and connection with the voters," said the leader. Sub-head: Grass-roots dynamicsChelakkara assembly segment is made up of nine grama panchayats -- Chelakkara, Desamangalam, Kondazhy, Mullurkara, Panjal, Pazhayannur, Thiruvilwamala, Vallathol Nagar and Veravoor.
Of the nine panchayats, six are controlled by the LDF, and three by the UDF. These nine panchayats have a total of 151 wards, and LDF controls 82 wards or 54 per cent of them. That is the strength of the CPM. The UDF has 51 of the 151 wards in its kitty. The BJP has only 15 members. It has no representatives in three panchayats and the UDF has no representatives in one panchayat -- Vallathol Nagar, where 15 of the 16 wards are with the LDF and one with the BJP.Chelakkara and Pazhayannur with 22 wards each are the two biggest panchayats in the assembly segment. The LDF controls Chelakkara and the UDF controls Pazhayannur, with the BJP squeezed into a bit player.In the 17-member Thiruvilwamala panchayat, where the BJP and Congress are tied with six seats each, the BJP initially secured both the president and vice-president positions through a draw of lots after the 2020 local body elections.
However, two years later, the CPM, with its five members, joined forces with Congress to pass a no-confidence motion, resulting in the BJP losing control of its only panchayat in Thrissur district. The Thiruvilwamala panchayat vice-president K Balakrishnan is a BJP candidate in Chelakkara now.The CPM and the Congress said they were not in an alliance and they joined hands only to keep the "communal" BJP out of power. But the political affiliations of voters in Chelakkara are as fluid as the Bharathapuzha snaking through the constituency.Chelakkara has 2,11,211 registered voters for the byelection, an increase of 13,125 compared to the 2021 election.
Voters' exodus
Of the 13 assembly constituencies in the Thrissur district, 12 are with the LDF. UDF has Chalakudy as a consolation. "Thrissur was a UDF stronghold. But it started leaning towards the Left after 2000. But the trend was started by Chelakkara in 1996," said the CPI leader quoted above. From 1967 to 1996, the Congress's winning streak in the constituency was interrupted only once when CPM's CK Chakrapani was elected as MLA for the 1982 to 1987 term. In 1996, the CPM fielded K Radhakrishnan. He polled 45.93 per cent of votes and defeated Congress's TA Radhakrishnan by 2,323 votes. Chief Minister EK Nayanar made him the minister for the Welfare of Backward & Scheduled Communities. "Radhakrishnan was helped by the factionalism in the Congress in one panchayat that year. After that there was no turning back for him," said the LDF leader.
In 2001, Radhakrishnan increased CPM's vote share to 48.55 per cent and was elected with a margin of 56,451 votes. In 2006, Radhakrishnan polled 53.58 per cent of votes and was elected with a margin of 14,629.Back then, Congress's PC Manikandan polled 41.08 per cent of votes and the BJP's Shajumon Vattekkad polled a paltry 5.35 per cent (6257 votes). In Radhakrishnan's fourth outing in 2011, he polled 55.42 per cent, 1.84 percentage points more than the previous year, and increased his winning margin to 24,676 votes. Congress's KB Sasikumar polled 36.86 per cent - 4.22 percentage points less than in 2006.
The BJP's V A Krishnakumaran retained the party's vote share at 5.31 per cent. Chelakkara started seeing a 10 per cent swing from the 2016 election. That year, the CPM gave Radhakrishnan a break from electoral politics as he was made the party's district secretary. The party fielded Pradeep UR, who was the president of Deshamangalam grama panchayat from 2000 to 2005, in Chelakkara. The party retained the seat by a margin of 10,200 votes. The CPM's vote share dipped by 10.61 per cent.The Congress candidate Thulasi marginally increased her party's vote share to 38.07 per cent.But the CPM's loss was the BJP's gain. Shajumon P P increased BJP's vote share to 15.77 per cent from 5.31 per cent.
"We can attribute the sharp rise to BJP's popularity after Modi came to power," said a Congress leader in Chelakkara. "Votes might have flowed from CPM and Congress to BJP," he said. In 2021, the CPM fielded Radhakrishnan for the fifth time in Chelakkara. By now, he was the party's central committee member. He polled 83,415 votes and won by a whopping 39,400 votes. He cornered 54.41 per cent vote share, which was a 9.6 percentage points jump, almost getting back the vote lost to BJP in 2016. Only the votes did not come from the BJP. The saffron party held on to its vote share with its candidate Shajumon Vattekkad getting a 15.68 per cent vote. But the Congress's CC Sreekumar got only 28.71 per cent vote share, a slide of 9.36 per cent.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the CPM got its biggest shock when the young Congress candidate Ramya Haridas defeated PK Biju in the Alathur constituency, which includes Chelakkara. In 2024, the CPM fielded its election warhorse Radhakrishnan, a minister in Pinarayi Vijayan's cabinet, to wrest back the seat.When the LDF faced a washout in Kerala, Radhakrishnan was the only Left candidate to win. He defeated Ramya Haridas by a margin of 20,111 votes. But CPM's lead in the Chelakkara assembly segment was reduced to 5,173 votes, and the party's vote share in the segment dropped by 12.83 percentage points, compared to the 2021 Assembly election. Ramya Haridas lost but her vote share rose by 9.29 percentage points. BJP's surprise bullet in Alathur TN Sarasu increased the overall vote share by nearly 11 per cent and by 4.32 per cent in the Chelakkara assembly segment.