The CPI(M), leader of the Opposition lDF, is likely to hold bilateral discussions with CPI, the second biggest partner of the front, on Friday on the seat-sharing process for the coming lok Sabha election. The CPI is likely to ask the CPI(M) for more seats than it has been contesting so far or for exchanging unsafe seats for winnable constituencies.
The CPI-CPI(M) talks may take place after a meeting of the lDF leadership. The Marxists had decided to have talks with the CPI after sensing the danger in letting the latter make its demands public. It is learned that State CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan has requested the CPI leaders not to issue public statements on the matter.
On Thursday, CPI’s parliamentary party leader and national executive member C Divakaran said in Thiruvananthapuram that his party would present its demand for immediate start of the seat-sharing talks at Friday’s lDF meet. “We feel that talks should start at the earliest. There are several things to decide,” he said.
The CPI wants early start to the seat-sharing talks considering the setbacks it had suffered after big brother CPI(M) decided to take over the Ponnani lok Sabha seat from it to field a candidate of Islamist leader Abdul Nasser Madani’s choice in 2009. After protracted disputes, the Marxists took over the seat and gave the obviously unsafe Wayanad constituency to the CPI.
The CPI had contested four — Wayanad, Thrissur, Mavelikkara and Thiruvananthapuram — of the total 20 seats in Kerala in the last lok Sabha election
and lost them all. There are already rumours that the CPI(M) is planning to take over the Thiruvananthapuram seat but Divakaran said that the question of giving up
that constituency did not
arise at all.
The CPI’s demand for more lok Sabha seats or at least for exchanging certain unsafe seats for winnable constituencies was first aired by none other than national secretary Sudhakaran Reddy during a national executive meeting in Delhi on June 1. Reddy had said that the demand was fair and justifiable considering the party’s present position.
The plan of the CPI is to ask for the Idukki constituency, most parts of which are covered by tea plantations where the party’s trade union, AITUC, is said to be the strongest. In the last election, this seat was contested for the lDF by Francis George of the Kerala Congress (J) which had later merged with the Kerala Congress (M) to become part of the Congress-led UDF.
CPI sources expressed the confidence that the CPI(M) will have to concede to at least some of its demands considering its rise in popularity as a leftist outfit in the past five years. The lDF had won only four seats — all by CPI(M) candidates — in the State in the 2009 lok Sabha election while it had won 18 of the total 20 seats in the 2004 polls.