As the campaign for the May 16 Assembly polls enters the final phase, the poll debate is getting increasingly dominated by the two major alliances, the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Opposition Left Democratic Front (LDF).
From what one sees and hears on different media, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is placed at a distant third when it comes to issues being thrown up and being discussed by the main campaigners.
The key voices being heard in the poll arena are those of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, Leader of the Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan, KPCC president V.M. Sudheeran and CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Pinarayi Vijayan. BJP State president Kummanam Rajasekharan’s interventions appear to be getting hampered by his inability to move as freely as he would have liked because of the need to be in Vattiyurkavu where he poses a huge challenge to candidates of both the UDF and the LDF.
The Opposition’s main campaign theme is corruption, forcing even some senior Congress leaders admit in private that the Opposition attack has already done serious harm to them. “We will be done in if the corruption theme works on the minds of the people. However, we will make it if our campaign over development and social security interventions finds traction with the electorate,” said a senior Congress leader, who did not wish to be identified.
The Opposition leader has been drawing huge crowds at his meetings, something matched on the UDF side by only Mr. Chandy. With the Chief Minister filing a defamation suit against the Opposition leader and the latter daring the Chief Minister to do whatever he could to stop him from speaking his mind, the poll debate over the past few days has been one between just the two of them.
In between all this, Mr. Sudheeran has been making himself heard loud and clear by exploiting what is widely being seen as the LDF’s ambivalent stand on the liquor issue. The death of a person, stated to be a CPI(M) activist, who had been injured in an explosion while making crude bombs, has given additional ammunition to Mr. Sudheeran.
On his part, Mr. Chandy has sought to put the CPI(M) further on the defensive raking up the T.P. Chandrasekharan murder, exactly four years ago on May 4, 2012, and Mr. Achuthanandan’s letter seeking an investigation into the conspiracy angle of the sensational murder.
The BJP has indeed come into the centre of the debate, but not as a discussant, but as a subject of discussion. This had to do with the charges and counter-charges hurled against each other during the past few days by the LDF and the UDF over who had joined hands with the BJP and its earlier avatar Jan Sangh in the past.
Role of BDJS
The LDF was the first to trigger the debate over the issue, accusing the Congress of using the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) as a conduit to divert BJP votes to the UDF kitty. The BJP is expected to return to the centre stage of the poll debate once Prime Minister Narendra Modi hits the campaign trail on May 6.
Mr. Modi would be addressing rallies in five districts. BJP president Amit Shah, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu would also be in the State for the final phase of the campaign and that should give sufficient vocal presence to the BJP in the poll arena.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance comes a distant third in the campaign.
