The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] district committee has come to the conclusion that a share of its votes has shifted to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the wake of the aggressive campaign of its Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.
CPI(M) candidates A. Vijayaraghavan and A.N. Shamsheer were defeated in the Kozhikode and Vadakara Lok Sabha constituencies respectively.
Both the constituencies were retained by Congress nominees M.K. Raghavan and Mullappally Ramachandran. Mr. Raghavan won by a margin of 16,883 votes, while Mr. Ramachandran, former Union Minister of State for Home, a slender margin of 3,306 votes.
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“The presence of smaller parties such as the Aam Aadmi Party and Social Democratic Party of India also damaged our prospects. This is apart from the votes received by None Of The Above (NOTA) in both the constituencies which were above 6,000 votes. But the party had secured more votes than in the last elections,” CPI(M) district secretariat member M. Bhaskaran told
The BJP has vastly improved its performance possibly on the Modi factor that was seen in most constituencies in the State.
“But it is not the CPI(M) votes alone that have drifted towards the BJP. The Congress party too lost votes,” he said.
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The former Mayor said that Kozhikode could not be classified as a traditional Left seat. Only thrice we have won — E.K. Imbichi Bava (1980) and M.P. Veerendrakumar (1996 and 2004), then Janata Dal (Secular). However Vadakara was our stronghold. The party believes that the Revolutionary Marxist Party shifted its votes for Congress candidates. We had expected that party to get at least 35,000 votes,” Mr. Bhaskaran, who is in charge of district secretary in the absence of T.P. Ramakrishnan, who has proceeded on leave for a month.
Possibly, some of the religious groups might have favoured the Congress candidate in Kozhikode. This was seen in the voting pattern in Kozhikode city, Elathur, Koduvally, and Kunnamangalam.
He dismissed the theory that the outsider tag of the CPI(M) candidates worked against both of them. “Mr. Shamsheer is from Thalassery Assembly segment falling under the Vadakara constituency. One cannot compare the case of Mr. Vijayaraghavan, as Mr. Raghavan is actually from Payyannur,” Mr. Bhaskaran said.
“Our party machinery was in full gear. No undercurrents can be attributed to the defeat of our candidates. There was no problem with our candidates,” he said.