The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI-M]’s silence on the charge that the Lok Sabha seats of Ponnani, Pathanamthitta, Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam, and Idukki are ‘payment’ ones gives room for doubt, Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala has said.
The Minister was inaugurating the Assembly mandalam convention of United Democratic Front (UDF) candidate Anto Antony at Aranmula on Wednesday.
The CPI(M) State leadership was yet to deny the charges in this regard. It was not the absence of eligible party candidates that had prompted the CPI(M) to opt for ‘outsourced’ independent candidates for the five constituencies. Instead, the CPI(M) leadership was united in preventing any candidate associated with V.S. Achuthanandan from entering the fray, he said.
The victory of Mr. Antony in Pathanamthitta was a prestige issue for the Congress. The State’s politics was polarised in favour of the UDF, he said. The UDF could secure a historic win in the by-elections to the State Assembly in Piravom and Neyyattinkara and it had won 16 of the 20 Parliament seats in the previous general elections. This time, the UDF was poised to win all the 20 constituencies, he added.
The CPI(M) leadership had sidelined many able leaders due to their affiliation to Mr. Achuthanandan. The writing on the wall was that Mr. Achuthanandan would lose the chair of the Leader of the Opposition after the Parliament elections, Mr. Chennithala said.
The people should review political and economic situation at the State and Central levels before exercising their franchise, he said alleging that Narendra Modi was a candidate of the corporate world. For the Congress, every seat was crucial as it intended to form a secular, democratic government at the Centre, he said.
The CPI(M) was drifting away from the common people and the failure of various agitations launched by it against the government was a testimony to this. Even Mr. Achuthanandan was not confident of the LDF’s victory, Mr. Chennithala said.
