Fear and anxiety are growing among the residents of Kannur, known as Kerala’s Marxist heartland, as campaigning has picked up momentum for the crucial civic elections to be held in the first week of November with reports coming out about political parties, particularly the CPI(M), mobilising weapons with the alleged intention of marring the poll process and intimidating rivals.
With the police unearthing the other day a huge collection of weapons including dozens of country bombs, swords and axes kept hidden in a vacant plot owned by a Marxist fellow-traveller at Pazhaya Nirathu near Koothuparambu town in Kannur district has led to escalation of the fear that the CPI(M) is indulging in weapons mobilisation for use during the election.
Complaints have already come up that the Marxists had forced BJP and Congress leaders and workers through the tactic of threats and intimidation to either not to file nominations or to withdraw the papers they had already filed. It is said that this is the reason why the CPI(M)’s 14 women candidates in the newly constituted Anthur Municipality have no rivals in the poll.
“The CPI(M) is claiming that these women candidates have no rivals in their wards because of its phenomenal strength. That is not the truth. The truth is that Marxist goons had been preventing workers of other parties who wanted to contest from filing nominations using threats,” said K Sudhakaran, former Congress MP from Kannur.
According to a top BJP leader in the district, Marxists could resort to large-scale violence during this civic poll. “They are apprehensive that whatever advantage they were expecting in the poll due to the (Congress-led) UDF’s misrule could be offset by our increased strength. In such situations they have always depended on the tactic of intimidation,” he said.
A senior police official said that there were professional bomb-manufacturing gangs in Kannur which make bombs for all parties on demand apart from the regular bomb-making centres run by organisations like the CPI(M). “We are doing everything we can to counter this. But it is very difficult to identify all such people and spots,” he said.
Several areas in Kannur had witnessed violence that lasted several days after a CPI(M) activist was murdered in Kasaragod district and a BJP activists was hacked to death in Thrissur district on the last Onam fest day, August 28. “In that situation, the ongoing weapons mobilisation programme has to be seen very seriously,” the police official said.
In a raid, the police had on Monday seized 32 country bombs, 14 swords, four axes, several iron rods, three knives and a revolver from the vacant plot in Pazhaya Nirathu. Officials informed that most of the weapons had been made recently adding that the presence of pistols in such weapons collections was a new development in Kannur and demanded particular attention.
Sensing the seriousness of the situation, the State Election Commission has assured the district administration that priority will be given to Kannur in deploying Central forces if their services are available for the local body elections. The District Collector had in a letter to the EC pointed out that the Central forces had been deployed in Kannur during all the recent elections.
According to the police, there are 1,050 sensitive polling booths in Kannur of which 640 should be termed critical. Though web-casting will be arranged in all these booths, officials say that this will not be sufficient to ensure fool-proof security. Security experts are of the opinion that the State police have limitations in effectively dealing with the situation during election.
“Kannur has always seen eruption of or escalation in violence during elections or during the run-up to elections. It goes without saying that the CPI(M) has always been on one side in all such incidents. The people already that the Marxists may play truant during this election also as it is very crucial to them,” said Sasidharan Nair, a social worker in Kannur.