The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] has announced its candidates for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The party is contesting in 15 seats.
CPI(M) State Secretary M.V. Govindan on Tuesday said incumbent MP A.M. Ariff will contest again from Alappuzha.
He said K. S. Hamsa, an Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) dissident contesting on the CPI(M) ticket from Ponnani, would get the hammer and sickle election symbol though he was yet to be a cardholding party member. He said CPI(M)-backed independent candidates contesting on non-party election symbols was a thing of the past.
The CPI(M)‘s candidates for other constituencies are K. Radhakrishnan (Alathur), V. Joy (Attingal), Professor C. Raveendranath (Chalakudy), K. J. Shine (Ernakulam), Joyce George (Idukki), M. V. Jayarajan (Kannur), M. V. Balakrishnan (Kasaragod), M. Mukesh (Kollam), Elamaram Kareem (Kozhikode), V. Waseef (Malappuram), A. Vijayaraghavan (Palakkad), T.M. Thomas Isaac (Pathanamthitta) and K. K. Shailaja (Vadakara).
The list includes a Minister, a Politburo member and three CPI(M) district secretaries.
Mr. Govindan expressed confidence that the party would erase the ignominy of winning only in Alappuzha in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
“The LDF will win in 20 seats. The Rahul Gandhi factor that benefited the Congress in Kerala in 2019 has petered out. Nobody believes the Congress’s false premise that Mr. Gandhi will be the next Prime Minister of India”, Mr Govindan said.
Mr. Govindan said the CPI(M) is fielding high-profile leaders with a proven electoral track record and popular appeal to defeat the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
He said the current controversy surrounding the 2012 murder of Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) leader T.P. Chandrasekharan would have zero bearing on Ms. Shailaja’s campaign in the Vadakara constituency.
Mr. Govindan said the LDF’s staunchly secular politics offered an alternative to the BJP’s “extreme Hindu majoritarianism and the Congress’s soft Hindutva line.”
He said Mr. Mukesh would prevail in Kollam, given incumbent MP and RSP leader N. K. Premachandran’s alleged Sangh Parivar drift.
“Mr. Premachandran had a tete-a-tete meal with Mr. Modi in the Lok Sabha canteen. A BSP MP who partook in the luncheon has defected to the BJP. The question is whether Mr. Premachandran will follow the same tack”, Mr Govindan said.
He reiterated that a vote for the Congress in Kerala could play out as an inadvertent endorsement of the BJP. Elected Congress leaders, including Ministers, MPs and MLAs, defected to the BJP at the drop of a hat, he said.
‘Sole bulwark’
Mr. Govindan said the LDF was the sole bulwark against the Sangh Parivar in Kerala. Minorities and secular Hindus, who were in the majority in Kerala, were increasingly sceptical about the Congress’s “soft Hindutva tilt.”
Mr. Govindan said there was nothing politically quirky in the CPI(M) fighting the Congress in Kerala. “The Congress and the AAP are allies in New Delhi and rivals in Punjab”, he pointed out.
He said the LDF has hedged against a possible Congress-BJP “vote trade” in the Lok Sabha polls.
Mr. Govindan said the INDIA bloc could easily defeat the BJP if it could consolidate anti-Sangh Parivar votes in the Hindi-speaking heartlands. “In the 2019 (Lok Sabha) polls, the BJP won by a thin margin in scores of seats. The anti-BJP votes had dispersed to the NDA’s benefit”, he said.
‘IUML sulking’
Mr. Govindan said the Congress was a party in shambles. Its leaders were sniping at each other in public. The IUML was sulking after the Congress rejected the former’s demand for a third Lok Sabha seat. The UDF’s seat-sharing talks were in limbo. Inherent differences in the Congress and within its allies would cause the Opposition alliance to implode. “The UDF has no existence without the IUML”, Mr. Govindan said.
He said the LDF would hit the campaign trail running.
The CPI and the Kerala Congress (M) had announced their candidates earlier.
