Left Democratic Front (LDF) candidates for the five Assembly segments where byelections are scheduled to be held on October 21 will be announced on Friday.
All the five seats, Manjewaram, Ernakulam, Aroor, Konni, and Vattiyurkavu, were contested by the CPI(M) in the las Assembly election. The CPI(M) State secretariat that met here on Tuesday and considered panel of candidates from the respective district committees, decided to elicit the opinion of the district as well as the mandalam (Assembly segment) committees before finalising the candidates.
The district and mandalam committees would meet on Wednesday and forward their proposals to the State secretariat which would take a final call on Friday. The decision to seek a larger opinion is aimed at ensuring maximum participation, involvement and cooperation of leaders and cadre at all levels.
The party decision to field certain candidates, as in the case of Innocent in Chalakudy ignoring the opinion of the mandalam committee had drawn a negative result in the Lok Sabha election and hence an understanding had been made to gauge the views of workers at all levels before finalising the candidates, sources said.
The CPI(M)Thiruvananthapuram district secretariat will meet on Wednesday morning and the Vattiyoorkavu mandalam committee in the afternoon. The secretariat is understood to have explored the options for fielding a candidate from the linguistic minorities in Manjeswaram, an Independent in Ernakulam and Mayor V.K. Prasanth, district panchayat president V.K. Madhu and Kerala State Handicrafts Development Corporation chairman V.S. Sunil Kumar in Vattiyurkavu.
LDF decision
The LDF State committee that met here in the afternoon decided to maintain status quo in the case of the seats and form election committees at all levels by September 29 and 30, convener A. Vijayaraghavan told reporters here.
The committee also decided to stage evening dharnas in all 140 Assembly segments on October 10 against the economic policies of the Centre.
