An analysis of the seat-sharing patterns in the Assembly elections held between 1982 and 2011 revealed that the Congress had suffered the most by accommodating allies at the expense of contesting fewer seats.
The CPI(M) had the upper hand in the seat-sharing process in the elections held in 1982, 1987, 1996, 2001 and 2006 while the Congress could not manage to stake a claim that is larger than its expected quota in the elections held in 1991, 2001 and 2006.
“Despite being the largest constituent party in the UDF, the Congress contested fewer seats in 1991, 2001 and 2006 to accommodate more allies. The CPI(M) had enjoyed the upper hand in seats-haring as it remains the only party in the Left Democratic Front (LDF) to have staked a claim that is larger than its quota except for the elections held in 1991 and 2011,” said G. Gopakumar, Vice Chancellor of the Central University of Kerala and former Head of the Department of Political Science, Kerala University. C.A. Josekutty, Director of the Survey Research Centre at the Department of Political Science in Kerala University, said that seat allocation among LDF allies had taken place on the basis of a quota (seats for which the CPI(M) and its allies were either winners or runners-up in the previous election. “The CPI(M) has been able to gain largely at the expense of smaller parties. However, in the Lok Sabha election, the LDF had clearly stuck to a distribution of seats on the basis of past performance, with very little deviation,” he said.
The figures showed that the Indian Union Muslim League had never agreed to give up its claim in the UDF’s seat-sharing process. From 18 seats in the 1982 election, the party’s supremacy in the front remained intact as it got up to 23 in 1987 and remained steady except in 2001 when it agreed to contest in 21 seats instead of the 22 it received in 1996.
The CPI’s seat share in the LDF was 26 in the elections held in 1982 and 1987. It slipped to 24 and 22 in 1991 and 1996 respectively. But the party managed to increase it to 24 in the elections held in 2001 and 2006 before improving it to 27 seats in 2011.
