Last-minute fireworks were missing. Neither there were many clashes between party workers that the adrenaline rush usually leads to.
But excitement was nevertheless at its peak at the Kozhikode beach when the public campaign for the Assembly polls drew to a close in the district on Sunday evening.
Just a day left for voting, workers and candidates will now engage in silent campaign on Monday. Though it was expected that the number of workers will be less in view of the ban on ‘kottikkalasam’, hordes of people participated in the last leg in style. Campaign songs blared loudly from vehicles as vote seeking reached its zenith. COVID social protocols were thrown to the wind in many places.
What energised United Democratic Front (UDF) workers was former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi’s road show for the candidates from Kozhikode North and Kozhikode South Assembly seats, K.M. Abhijith and Noorbina Rasheed, respectively. Hundreds of UDF workers participated in the event that started from Puthiyakadavu and concluded on the Light House premises in the afternoon.
Even after Mr. Gandhi left for Nemom in Thiruvananthapuram, the workers did not disperse, but held their own ‘show’, a majority of them workers of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), in support of the candidates. Small groups of workers, some of them accompanied by people beating drums, were seen roaming around the beach.
The Left Democratic Front (LDF) too concluded the campaign with a show of strength on the road sans kottikkalasam. Very few State-level leaders of the CPI(M) were, however, seen during the campaign in the city. Ahmed Devarkovil, the LDF candidate for Kozhikode South, held the event from the Palayam area and Thottathil Raveendran, candidate from Kozhikode North, was seen in an open campaign vehicle, accompanied by A. Pradeep Kumar, MLA, at Nadakkavu.
Candidates of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), however, came to the beach side for their final leg of the campaign just half an hour or so before 7 p.m.
According to reports, almost a similar pattern of campaign was seen in rural areas and towns in the district. The LDF has 11 MLAs from the district, the UDF two, and the Congress has none. The party hopes to improve its performance this time, and the UDF expects to snatch Vadakara from the LDF by fielding K.K. Rema, wife of slain Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) leader T.P. Chandrasekharan.
