Congress appeared to have stolen a march on its rivals by naming Uma Thomas as the party’s candidate for the Thrikkakkara Assembly byelection.
The CPI(M) and the BJP will soon follow suit so as not to be outpaced by the Congress in the campaign.
Opposing fronts view the bypoll as a yardstick of the second Pinarayi Vijayan government’s performance and a bellwether of the public’s position on the Silverline project.
Ms. Thomas is the wife of late Thikkakara MLA P. T. Thomas, and the party hopes to cash in on the groundswell of sympathy that followed her husband's death.
No novice
Ms. Thomas is no political novice. She has a history of student activism and significant election experience, shadowing Thomas on his many campaign trails.
By settling on Ms. Thomas as the party’s obvious choice, the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) has side-stepped the fractious battles that often herald candidate selection.
It has, for now, presented a unified front. The KPCC also pacified Congress leader Dominic Presentation's scepticism about candidate selection.
The Congress also reckoned that Ms. Thomas’s presence in the electoral field could frustrate any efforts by dissident Congress veteran K.V. Thomas to throw a spanner in the works.
Prof. Thomas had said somewhat cryptically that he would back "development", which Congress viewed as a euphemism for supporting the Silverline project.
Nevertheless, the ease in candidate selection belied the formidable hurdles faced by the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Thrikkakara.
AAP factor
The Twenty20 could dampen the UDF’s chances if it tied up with the Aam Admi Party (AAP) to fight the bypoll. The party had garnered nearly 11% of votes in the constituency in the 2021 Assembly elections.
The tie-up, if at all, could see top AAP leaders, including Arvind Kejriwal, campaigning in Thrikkakara and presenting the voters with a plausible alternative to the UDF.
The CPI(M) mandalam committee is meeting in Ernakulam on Wednesday to finalise the front’s candidate. The CPI(M) hopes to draw more minority votes to increase its Assembly seats to 100, a coveted magic number for the LDF. Thrikkakara’s demographics could impact LDF’s candidate selection, particularly its sizeable Muslim population.
