The Kerala CPI(M), still struggling to overcome the shock of the humiliating defeat suffered by the party-led lDF in the June 27 Assembly by-election in Aruvikkara constituency in Thiruvananthapuram district, seems to be preparing for a serious examination of its frailties, mistakes and inadequacies.
A review report prepared by the CPI(M)’s Thiruvananthapuram district committee on the Aruvikkara by-election identified the party’s inability to foresee the growth of the BJP, erosion of leftist votes, concentration of minorities against the left and minority appeasement and misuse of official machinery by the Congress-led ruling UDF as the main reasons for the defeat of the lDF candidate.
The report, presented to the party’s Thiruvananthapuram district committee the other day by district secretary Kadakampally Surendran, admitted that the lDF could have pushed to the third place in the by-election if the front’s candidate was not CPI(M)’s former minister M Vijayakumar, a native of Aruvikkara and a well-respected person in the area.
In the Aruvikkara by-election, necessitated by the death of Speaker G Karthikeyan of the Congress, his son and Congress candidate KS Sabarinathan had defeated Vijayakumar by a margin of 10,128 votes. However, the biggest surprise in the by-election was the increase in BJP’s votes from just 7,694 in the 2011 Assembly election to 34,145.
The report said that the party had expected the BJP to put up better performance than in 2011 especially as its candidate was the widely respected former Union minister, O Rajagopal, but it had failed to foresee the possibility of that party making such a huge achievement. This was a big failure on the part of the party, the report admitted.
The review report also admitted that the left had suffered a huge outflow of votes from its traditional support base in Aruvikkara and these votes were captured by the BJP. This erosion had happened even in panchayats which were generally known as leftist fortresses, it said. The district committee wanted the State committee to discuss this matter seriously.
The report also contained the usual communist justifications for electoral defeats, like the theories that sharp communal polarization had taken place in the constituency, that the Congress and the BJP had fished in troubled waters by worsening this polarization and that the UDF had misused official machinery in the by-election.
The UDF had been successful in polarizing the minority votes by projecting the BJP as a big threat and the failure of the left to interfere in the required manner to counter this had contributed heavily to the front’s setback, the report said. The party had failed in appealing to the minorities properly, it added.
Also, the left could not cash in on the anti-incumbency sentiment in the constituency against the UDF, the report said, adding that the anti-incumbency votes were split because of the strong presence of the BJP. The district committee wanted the State committee and secretariat to examine all these aspects in detail by considering the defeat as a big lesson.
According to sources, the CPI(M) district committee has come to the conclusion - though this has not been included in the review report - that a large number of members of the influential Ezhava community, a Hindu backward caste which had traditionally been supporting the left, in several panchayats in Aruvikkara had supported the BJP in the by-election.
At the same time, the local left in Aruvikkara is said to be unhappy about the conduct of the top CPI(M) leadership during electioneering. Sources quoted local party leaders as saying that the Aruvikkara by-poll result had proved that the call of the State leadership for unity should have been limited to the lower rungs but it should have been applicable to the top leaders as well.