IUML leading UDF poll campaign

Election conventions in Kozhikode, Vadakara inaugurated by IUML leaders

Joint effort: IUML workers put up posters of M.K. Raghavan, the UDF candidate for Kozhikode Lok Sabha constituency, at Kuttichira.

The strong presence of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) has become a factor to reckon with in the election campaigns of Congress candidates in Kozhikode and Vadakara for the Lok Sabha polls.

In most of the Parliamentary polls in recent times, more than the Congress party, it is the rank and file of the IUML that is energising the campaign of the United Democratic Front (UDF). The UDF election conventions in Kozhikode and Vadakara were inaugurated by IUML leaders Syed Hyderali Shihab Thangal and P.K. Kunhalikutty last week.

The reasons are many — the lack of senior Congress leaders in Kozhikode district, factional feuds in the party and the diminishing base of the Congress over the last few decades.

Though the party nominees won the Lok Sabha seats in 2009 and 2014, the Congress party has not been able to win from any of the Assembly segments in the last two elections, even when the UDF gained power in 2011.

Assembly polls

At the same time, the IUML has been winning at least two to three seats in the Assembly elections. The party won two seats, Kozikode South and Kuttiyadi, even during the anti-incumbency wave against the UDF regime.

In the ongoing Lok Sabha poll campaign, the IUML leaders vociferously taking on the CPI(M), especially in the Vadakara region where both parties are at each other’s throats politically. Parakkal Abdulla who won from Kuttiyadi is leading the attack on the CPI(M) in Vadakara while it is M.K. Muneer in Kozhikode.