Onmanorama pollmeter tracks 12 closely-fought constituencies across different phases of campaign: Nemom, Manjeshwar, Palakkad, Kunnathunad, Pala, Kottarakkara, Peravoor, Thripunithura, Ambalappuzha, Taliparamba, Payyanur and Nattika. This is the final part on Taliparamba, where Onmanorama captures emerging trends from ground-level feed. Read the first and second parts here.

Kannur: Not the five-point dip in the CPM’s vote share in 2021 when her husband and now party state chief M V Govindan contested. Not even the challenge from T K Govindan (75), the most senior leader in the party's Kannur Secretariat. Nothing, it seems, has made P K Shyamala (65) change her pace or break a sweat. 

Her daily campaign began only at 3.30 pm. Mornings are unhurried, reserved for the occasional private meeting, if any. It was a routine inherited from CPM’s two-time MLA James Mathew. And Shyamala has stayed with it. 
At her two-storey house in Anthoor’s Morazha, noon wears a quiet look. A few children sit in the verandah, chatting, filling voter slips -- more to keep them engaged. No party workers are milling around. No campaign buzz. In this CPM citadel, the calmness feels out of place. 

Shyamala has left the criticism coming her way to the party to handle, and the responsibility of delivering victory in Taliparamba to it as well. And so, the party machinery hums across the constituency. “I have been campaigning here since 1985, for both Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. But the response I am getting now, I have not seen before,” Shyamala told Onmanorama.

 Even as T K Govindan alleged that her candidature was resisted across party forums and imposed from above, P K Shyamala calls it a collective decision. “Behind every party decision, there is careful thought. Once a decision is taken, comrades stand by it. The party decides who contests where, and we accept it, and move forward.” 

Shyamala's corner meetings draw crowds. The enthusiasm, though, is measured. If she stays ahead, it will be less about the campaign and more about the CPM’s organisational muscle in a constituency that has returned a communist MLA without a break since 1977. 

But this time, there is churn beneath the surface. Govindan, who has spent 60 years in the party, has framed his rebellion as a protest against rising nepotism and what he calls the erosion of inner-party democracy. 

He claims quiet support from within. “Members from branch, local and area committees call me. They say they will vote for me, even if they are seen campaigning for Shyamala,” he said. 

The CPM has its ways of nipping or at least blunting dissent in its ranks, particularly during elections. But the party will find it hard to douse the dissent that will manifest only in the EVM cubicle. 

Onmanorama stumbled on an election-day experience in M V Govindan and Shyamala's Morazha, where the CPM prides itself on winning local body elections without a contest. 

In those days in Morazha, an elderly woman recalled that they (CPM supporters) would queue up early at polling booths, not to cast their own votes, but to cast the votes of those they thought wouldn’t back their candidates. Her husband, who died two years ago, was a communist of the old Shripad Dange line that supported the Congress.

Once, as he stood in the queue at Morazha Central School, the same booth as Shyamala and M V Govindan's, he heard his wife’s name being called from inside. But she was at home. 

The man in his late 60s stepped forward and called out, “She is not my wife.” 

The woman inside did not miss a beat. “Do you have to make our domestic fight public?” she shouted back. 

The old man stood stunned as “his wife” cast her vote, and, on her way out, added: “Come home, I’ll show you.” 

T K Govindan, who knows a trick or two of the CPM, said those days are harder to pull off now. The electoral rolls have been cleaned up. Booths are under camera watch. And the UDF, he said, has become a force to counter the LDF at the booths. “I’ve told CPM workers: if you are caught, you are on your own. The party will not come to your help.” 

In Malappattam panchayat, his home turf, where like in Anthoor, almost all wards are with the CPM, three without a contest. Of the 6,500 votes, the UDF has around 2,000 and the LDF 4,500. Govindan said he can peel away another 2,500 from the LDF because of his personal clout. “There is anger against the leadership. You will see it after the election.” 

But anger, here, rarely announces itself in public because the dependence on the party runs deep. "Here, they cannot even say no to Deshabhimani. How will they say no to their candidate publicly!" said Joseph Uzhunnupara, Congress's former member of Chapparapadava Panchayat. 

By the last stretch of the campaign, Govindan had begun to find his rhythm, powered by Congress and IUML workers. In Taliparamba constituency, controlled by the UDF, his face was dominant. 

Govindan is looking to turn the tables in Kuttiattoor panchayat too, where the UDF won only in two of the 18 wards. "We lost seven wards with narrow margins, cumulatively adding up to only 450 votes," he said. 

Yet, every now and then, his habit of 60 years intervened. “The LDF will win,” Govindan would say. The nervous supporters would jump in to correct him. “He'll have to unlearn the muscle memory of his tongue,” said Sasi, a Congress worker in Kuttiattoor. 

In contrast, the Left’s famed booth-level reach appears thinner in panchayats such as Chapparapadavu, where the UDF and LDF are evenly matched. “Usually, by the end of the campaign, the LDF would have visited every house three times,” said a former CPM district committee member from the panchayat. “This time, there are houses they haven’t visited even once.”

 That absence is new. The UDF, sensing an opening, has tightened its ranks. Even with a rebel in the fray, local Congress leaders said the UDF voters have largely consolidated behind Govindan. 

In Anthoor, where all 29 divisions are held by the LDF, five without contest, the UDF is attempting something unusual: placing booth agents in every polling station. That, in itself, is a shift. 

Their confidence draws from recent numbers. In 2021, the UDF added 20,000 votes in the constituency, halving the CPM’s margin. By the 2024 Lok Sabha election, K Sudhakaran had edged past the LDF in Taliparamba segment by 8,000 votes. "Sudhakaran got the lead without even campaigning as hard as I have this time," said Govindan. 

The CPM, though, still has the cushion of a network that rarely fails during Assembly elections. For them, a win, any win, will do. And for now, that keeps Shyamala just ahead. An upset here is not one the CPM's leadership can afford.
Read the first and second parts here.