The Kannur Lok Sabha constituency is set for a repeat of the no-holds-barred electioneering as witnessed in 2014, with Congress leader K. Sudhakaran locking horns with Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s P.K. Sreemathy again.
Ms. Sreemathy had then wrested the seat from him with a margin of 6,000-odd votes.
Mr. Sudhakaran’s candidature was greeted by Congress and United Democratic Front (UDF) workers who turned up in large numbers at the Kannur railway station to receive him on his arrival from Kochi in the morning.
The reception at the station was an informal flagging off of what is expected to be a fierce battle of Mr. Sudhakaran, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee vice president, to wrest the seat back from Ms. Sreemathy. Mr. Sudhakaran won the seat in the 2009 election by a margin of 43,151 votes defeating his CPI(M) rival K.K. Ragesh.
“The Congress is on a comeback trail in the country and all Lok Sabha constituencies, including Kannur, will reflect this change,” Mr. Sudhakaran told the media at the railway station. He said the coming election was a fight against two “fascist forces”, fascism of political violence in the State and fascism at the national level.
He also said the UDF workers were facing the election carrying in their hearts sentiments of UDF activists whose blood was shed in Kannur and Kasaragod. The Congress and the UDF were confident that the seat would be captured, he said.
The party leadership also exuded confidence that Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s visit on Thursday of the families of party workers hacked to death in Kannur and Kasaragod would galvanise party workers for the electoral battle.
Rahul in Kannur today
Mr. Gandhi would reach the Kannur airport by 12 noon. He would meet at the airport VIP lounge members of the family of Youth Congress worker S.P. Shuhaib, who was hacked to death allegedly by CPI(M) workers on February 12, 2018, and other party workers who were victims of political attacks.
Spending 40 minutes with them, he would fly in a helicopter to Periye in Kasaragod to visit the families of Youth Congress workers Kripesh and Sarath Lal, who were hacked to death by suspected CPI(M) workers on February 17.
