It is a common practice in any election for political parties to solicit ‘the valuable votes’ of the electorate. In the Aruvikkara Assembly constituency, where electioneering for Saturday’s by-election concluded on Thursday, each and every vote is going to be valuable. The two-week electioneering has been gruelling and tough, if not competitive, in a basically triangular contest.
The political parties will spend the next 48 hours in silent campaign as part of their bid to bring the maximum number of voters out of the total electorate of 1,84,210, of which 97,533 are women and 86,677 men.
Political climate
The heat and dust that Neyyattinkara kicked off was not felt in Aruvikkara mainly because of the difference in the nature of political climate. While Neyyattinkara win went on to shore up the United Democratic Front’s (UDF) slender margin in the Assembly, the Aruvikkara result will not have any impact in the short term because there is less than 11 months left for the current Assembly term to get over. But it could be a game changer for the State’s politics in the long term.
Congress candidate K.S. Sabarinadhan had several frontline leaders campaigning for him, including Congress Working Committee member A.K. Antony, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala, KPCC president V.M. Sudheeran, IUML chief Panakkad Syed Hyderali Shihab Thangal, and others. Leader of the Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan turned out to be the star campaigner for CPI(M) candidate M. Vijayakumar. BJP candidate O. Rajagopal had Union Minister Sadanada Gowda coming in for electioneering, but he has been campaigning on his own steam.
Age factor The Congress has played up the age factor to boost up Mr. Sabarinadhan’s prospects, besides harping on the late G. Karthikeyan’s memories to tweak its campaign. The CPI(M) has focused on projecting Mr. Vijayakumar as the local boy, but politically made all-out attempts to put the UDF on the mat on the issue of corruption. The LDF is looking for a victory here if only to vindicate its persistent campaigns against the ruling coalition on the issue of corruption, beginning from the solar scam to the bar bribery case. If Mr. Vijayakumar were to win this seat, it would go a long way in boosting his status within his party.
A victory for the UDF would provide it with a psychological advantage. Besides disproving the Opposition LDF corruption campaigns wrong, a win here would give the Congress and the UDF the energy to face the local body election in October and the Assembly election in 2016.
Uphill task Given the BJP’s record in Aruvikkara, Mr. Rajagopal would find it an uphill task since the fight is now clearly between the CPI(M) and the Congress. He could, however, help his party maintain the tempo it had created in Thiruvananthapuram by taking the second slot in the Nemom Assembly segment in the Thiruvananthapuram seat in the Lok Sabha election.
