As Kerala heads for polls tomorrow 6 April, the Congress party’s Kerala president Mullappally Ramachandran has sounded the alarm and called for a tactical backing of its ally Muslim League’s candidate in the constituency to stop the threat of ascendancy of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
For the Congress, the threat of losing this constituency looms large because BJP’s Kerala state president K Surendran is contesting from Manjeshwar.
Ramachandran’s statement should be analysed carefully because various opinion polls are predicting a BJP victory in the constituency. In the 2016 assembly election, K Surendran had lost the election with a margin of only 89 votes.
The Islamist radical outfit Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), the political wing of the Popular Front of India (PFI), has also backed the Muslim League candidate in order to defeat the BJP. In Kerala, it is quite common for the Congress and the Muslim League to join forces.
Ramachandran is now in for the fight for his political future as he also pleads with the Communist parties to transfer votes to each other in the constituencies where the BJP has high chances of winning.
But the irony is that while the state Congress chief is asking for help from the communists, his leader Rahul Gandhi has gone on a full offensive to discredit the Communist Party of India – Marxists (CPIM) and the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government.
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