Analysis | Gandhi family has its immunity intact in Wayanad, Priyanka betters Rahul
Though the voting percentage fell by 8 percentage points, Priyanka still managed to corner a bigger victory margin than her brother.
Though the voting percentage fell by 8 percentage points, Priyanka still managed to corner a bigger victory margin than her brother.
Though the voting percentage fell by 8 percentage points, Priyanka still managed to corner a bigger victory margin than her brother.
In the contest for Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, the only strategy left for rivals to explore was to try as much as they could to discredit Rahul Gandhi, the MP who left Wayanad for Raebareli. Both the CPI and the BJP did try but fell woefully short.
The result felt like an annihilation. Though the voting percentage fell by 8 percentage points, Priyanka still managed to corner a bigger victory margin than her brother. If Rahul Gandhi's victory margin in early 2024 was 3.64 lakh, his sister's was 4.10 lakh.
She also reclaimed for Congress the vote share Rahul Gandhi had amassed in 2019, the first time he contested in Wayanad. Then, Rahul's vote share was 64.94 per cent. Now, with 64.99 per cent, Priyanka has restored it for the Congress.
For her contenders, her brother Rahul was her proxy. They had a litany of woes against Rahul Gandhi, a list good enough to scare away any candidate, however formidable she might seem.
One, Rahul Gandhi did not seriously take up the man-animal conflict in Wayanad. Two, Rahul failed to persuade Karnataka's Congress Chief Minister to adopt a favourable stand on the night travel ban along the Kozhikode-Kollegal NH that cuts through Wayanad. Three, Rahul failed to bring the Nilambur–Nanjangud railway line to the attention of the Railway Board.
Four, Rahul abandoned Wayanad at its worst crisis (Rahul had already resigned his Wayanad seat when the Chooralmala-Mundakkai tragedy happened). Five, Rahul refused to raise even a pinkie when the Centre refused financial support for landslide victims.
CPI's Sathyan Mokeri, hoping to summon up the indignation of voters, even hinted that Rahul did not have the heart to fight Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said that Rahul should have raised the Wayanad issue with the Prime Minister. "If the PM had still refused, Rahul should have collected all the Kerala MPs and staged a dharna in front of the PM's office. He should have stayed put till the money was paid," Mokeri had said.
Six, Rahul was also accused of not uttering a word for farmers in Parliament. There were other far more embarrassing charges, like Rahul Gandhi not having even a 50 per cent attendance in Parliament. But none of these persuaded the Wayanad electorate. Priyanka Gandhi did not bother to address any of these charges. However, she persuasively articulated why her brother Rahul left Wayanad for Raebareli.
In her stump speeches, Priyanka disarmed her voters by collectively describing them as her brother's saviour. "Many people turned their backs on him. Some of his closest colleagues left him. And it was at this time, the most difficult period in his life, that he turned to you for support and encouragement," she said. She credited Wayanad voters for all her brother's achievements, including Bharat Jodo Yatra. It worked if the humongous majority was any indication.
The CPI, without much help from the CPM, was no formidable force in Wayanad. In 2014, when Sathyan Mokeri gave Congress's M I Shanavas a mighty scare, the CPM was fully behind him. Not this time. CPI insiders told Onmanorama that the CPM office in Kalpetta, at the heart of the constituency, had remained closed all through the campaign.
CPI's discouraging performance will inevitably widen the party's rift with the CPM. It was an open secret that the CPM was just a token presence at Mokeri's campaign rallies.
CPM sources had told Onmanorama that the party was not willing to spare its resources for a doomed battle. Further, after the CPI's "self-righteous" stand in the ADGP issue, the CPM was not too eager to come to the aid of its partner. Besides, the presence of Priyanka had drained the battle of any political significance.
However, the BJP could take some heart. Though the party's resources were concentrated in Palakkad, its young candidate, Navya Haridas, managed to sweep up more than 1 lakh votes, the only BJP candidate other than K Surendran to do so in Wayanad.
In the first half of 2024, when Surendran contested, he had the entire BJP apparatus behind him. Navya was largely left to fend for herself. If Mokeri focused his energies solely on Priyanka, Navya took on both the Gandhi family and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Her strategy was to emerge second, but eventually, she lost to Mokeri, the runner-up, by over one lakh votes.