A poster placed near the now famous grave at St George Orthodox Church at Puthuppally, in Kottayam district, Kerala, reads: “Oommen Chandy; here lies a saint who intercedes”. A massive portrait of the late Congress patriarch, a two-time Chief Minister of Kerala, who died this year, before his 80th birthday, is placed beneath the tomb; the light of half-burnt tapered candles gives the place a yellow glow. Handwritten pleas for intercession and prayers lie scattered around the burial place. Many holding rosaries kneel before the crypt to offer their paeans.
George Thomas, a 63-year-old farmer from Kozhencherry in Pathanamthitta district, is one among those who want the late leader to intercede for him. “Oommen Chandy used to be close to my paternal uncle although I never met him even once. But as a leader who had done so many things for the masses, I believe he can mediate with god,” he says.
After a funeral that witnessed a turnout of thousands, Chandy’s mortal remains were buried in a specially designated crypt only a few steps away from the church here — a centuries-old Syrian Christian pilgrimage centre. Chandy’s tomb is one of only a few burial chambers in the church’s ground reserved for elite Malankara Orthodox Syrian clergy members.
Over the past month-and-a-half, the burial place has received a steady stream of visitors, earning it a place in central Kerala’s Christian pilgrimage circuit, and imbuing the late leader with the halo of near sainthood.
Political uncertainty
The curious trend forms the backdrop of the keenly fought Assembly byelection battle in the Puthuppally constituency, scheduled for September 5. The late Chief Minister’s son, Chandy Oommen, is the Congress’ high-profile candidate, given his famous forename and his father’s popularity that seems to endure beyond the grave.
For 53 years, Puthuppally sent Chandy to the Assembly. The constituency became synonymous with anti-Left politics in Kerala. It is now poised to elect a successor to Chandy, its foremost leader, and the battle appears hard fought.
The sombre mood inside the church premises gives way to a charged-up election atmosphere outside. It evolves into a heady mix of energy, excitement, and intense competition with top-level leaders from the three significant coalitions ratcheting the electioneering to the next level. Even amidst the Onam holidays, the high-decibel campaign is making waves.
Although the result will not impact the current political scenario much, the byelection has a unique tinge. Puthuppally, an Assembly constituency where elections long used to be a simple, straight fight between Oommen Chandy and ‘others’ is now witnessing an exceedingly close two-cornered race.
For the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF), which are waging a high-stakes contest here, it also marks a dry-run to the Lok Sabha elections early next year.
From the vast rubber plantations on the tropical hills of Akalakunnam to the polder networks of Puthuppally and Vakathanam, the Assembly constituency extends across a vast area of agricultural land across eight grama panchayats. The region owes its middle-income status primarily to rubber cultivation and allied industries.
A traditional UDF bastion, Puthuppally, underwent a significant swing towards the Left during the previous local body election. The LDF is ruling six of the eight local bodies, besides a handful of cooperative societies.
Of the 1.76 lakh voters in the Assembly, about 45% belong to various Christian sects. Community organisations such as the Nair Service Society and the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam wield considerable sway among the Hindu majority electorate here. In contrast, Dalit organisations such as the Cherama Sambava Development Society are also influential.
“See the condition of this building. Will you help us make a new school building?” asks Sushama, a teacher with the Government Upper Primary School at Cheerankulam, near Meenadom. “This has been our long-standing demand. We ran from pillar to post to complete this, but we are still waiting for something to happen. Now, can you do something?” she continues, at a political meeting.
“Give me a chance. I shall address this for sure,” replies Jaick C. Thomas, a young CPI(M) leader fielded by the Left Democratic Front. Though unsuccessful, the 33-year-old had contested from Puthuppally against Chandy twice: in 2016 and 2021. The scene, however, is different this time.
A few metres from the interminable network of rubber plantations at Akalakkunnam, a motley group of 50-odd people are waiting under the canopy of a huge tree. It is just 9.30 a.m., but already stiflingly hot.
Impatience is writ large on their faces as they await the arrival of UDF candidate Chandy Oommen. As the wait finally ends, a man takes hold of a microphone, his speech touching upon topics from the scams that have engulfed the LDF government to the legacy of Oommen Chandy.
The speech stops abruptly as a weary-eyed candidate arrive in an open-roof vehicle. Stepping out, the candidate walks hurriedly towards a girl to receive a bunch of flowers.
Interacting with voters for days on end, the UDF candidate has faced the same question repeatedly: Will you be able to fill in the big shoes of your father? Watching the campaign in action, 80-year-old Jacob Varghese, a schoolmate of the late chief minister, has no doubts whatsoever.
“The young Oommen is the spitting image of his father, not just in looks but in his deeds. Like Chandy, he too is very approachable and well-mannered,” says Varghese.
“If I win, I promise to take care of Puthuppally like my appa (father),” Oommen too, declares emphatically to a rousing round of applause by the crowd.
Events have conspired within the Congress, which at present holds the Puthuppally seat, to field the 37-year-old — the son of the late leader — as its candidate. By fielding him, the party hopes to ride the wave of sympathy over Chandy’s death. At the same time, hoping that the image of Oommen as a young, educated Youth Congress leader, and the feeling of anti-incumbency against the LDF government work in his favour.
LDF harps on development
However, 18-year-old Aishwarya Ramesh from Kooroppada, a first-time voter, appears less enthused by the UDF candidate’s profile. “Given the lack of basic infrastructure like good roads in most villages here, people are so fed up with the previous legislator. With the support of many neutral voters, the LDF still holds a possibility,” she says, an ardent Leftist.
With little more than a week to go for the byelection, her comrades have made a concerted attempt to turn the campaign into a development discourse. They affirm that the electorate here is savvy enough to see beyond the sympathy wave.
The Left combine appears happy that its message on the lack of infrastructure development is getting through. It has brought in all its Ministers to press ahead. With the Kerala Congress (M) in its fold, the coalition also sees the bypoll as an opportunity to road-test the impact of Manipur violence among the Christian electorate of Puthuppally ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year.
The UDF, however, has veered off tactfully and, in turn, trained its guns on the State government, especially Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, over the recent scams, including the alleged receipt of kickbacks from a private mineral company.
While this battle of ideas rages on the ground, it has yet to be a campaign for the faint-hearted, on social media. Taking a leaf out of the national political playbook, the war has turned ugly with personal attacks on the present Chief Minister’s and former Chief Minister’s family members. Although the leadership on both sides has promptly disowned these acts, it only looks set to get uglier.
NDA campaign
The mood inside the National Democratic Alliance, which has fielded G. Lijin Lal, president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Kottayam district committee, is somewhat like a mission control. The grids are plotted, the soundbites sharpened, and the campaign units are battle-ready and deployed. All its meticulously crafted plans, rooted in the welfare and development schemes of the Narendra Modi government, are being implemented directly under the close watch of Radha Mohan Das Agarwal, national general secretary of the BJP.
The BJP supporters, however, appear privately downcast about the party’s electoral prospects, in part given the nature of the contest. “The people we speak to are generally thankful for the welfare programmes rolled out by the Union government. But the sympathy wave triggered by Oommen Chandy is so strong that it will uproot everything else,” says 65-year-old Sivadas, a BJP supporter and resident of Arayd colony, a low-income neighbourhood in Puthuppally panchayat.
His concerns are complex. As they sift through the early numbers, the BJP campaign managers have realised it will not be the election they hoped for. They are equally wary of a plausible scenario where a section of the forward Hindu communities, who otherwise support the BJP, lends a tactical vote to the UDF to ensure the Left coalition’s defeat.
“With systematic campaigning, we are looking for a remarkable improvement over the 8.87% vote share recorded during the previous election to take the total number of votes to 20,000,” says a BJP leader on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the din and bustle of the election has made no difference to the life inside the rubber-growing villages here. A desultory feeling has engulfed the plantations with the drop in margins, and the rubber growers are spoiling for a fight. “We want an indictment. Rubber is the primary crop in at least half of the eight panchayats here. Yet, the campaign is under-representing our concerns,” says Gregory Joseph, a small-scale rubber grower in Akalakunnam.
Above all considerations, the raging dispute between the Orthodox and Jacobite factions, who have historically organised into powerful vote banks here, always remains an overarching theme of the elections. Soliciting votes on lines of the identity of candidates is sure to give the leading coalitions some plausible grounds for unprecedented progress. The impressive performance of the LDF, which managed to bring down the UDF’s margin of victory to less than 10,000 in 2021, is widely attributed to a mobilisation of support by the Jacobite faction.
Whether that presumption holds true or not, the leading coalitions regard it as an essential component of winning Puthuppally. A closer look at the backgrounds of the three top candidates (Chandy Oommen, an Orthodox Christian, Jaick C Thomas, a Jacobite Christian, and G. Lijin Lal, a Hindu Nair) reflects this pattern.
