While the CPI(M) district leadership maintains that the Kerala Congress (Mani) candidate, Dhanesh Mathew Manjooran, will remain the official LDF candidate in the Ponekkara Division of the Kochi Corporation, CPI(M) workers at the local level are backing a party worker who filed his nomination as an Independent.
CPI(M) workers have refused to support Mr. Manjooran with the controversy surrounding him, said an area committee member who did not want to be named. Mr. Manjooran, a government pleader, was arrested in 2016 on charges of attempting to molest a woman.
Having abandoned Mr. Manjooran’s campaign, party workers are canvassing for P.V. Shaji, a member of the local committee of the party. “With the support of local workers, LDF votes in the area are likely to go to Mr. Shaji,” the committee member said. Another local committee member said that party workers had hoped that Mr. Manjooran’s nomination would be withdrawn before November 19, but when that was not done, they decided to back Mr. Shaji.
CPI(M) district secretary C.N. Mohanan said that Mr. Manjooran was the LDF’s official candidate from Ponekkara. “The KC(M) was asked to field another candidate. But they refused to do so and insisted on the same candidate contesting despite the opposition to his candidature. Since the seat was allotted to them, there was nothing we could do about it,” he added.
Babu Joseph, KC(M) district president, said that the party would write to the CPI(M) leadership to expel their rebel contesting in Ponekkara. “The CPI(M) insisted on taking Kadavanthra away from us this time, a seat we have been winning for several years. Replacing a candidate after a party decision has already been made is difficult,” he said. Mr. Manjooran is the Ernakulam mandalam committee president of the KC(M). Besides Ponekkara, the KC(M), a new LDF ally, has been allotted Thoppumpady and Konthuruthy.
Meanwhile, the Congress is hoping to cash in on the rift between CPI(M) workers and the KC(M) candidate. The LDF won the seat in 2005, followed by the UDF in 2010. The LDF bagged the seat again in 2015. Pious Joseph, the Congress candidate from the area, had represented the division in the 2010-15 council. “Work done during my term as councillor is likely to work in my favour this time. Besides, people have very little clarity on who the LDF candidate from the division is,” he said.
