Nonagenarian Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan, CPI(M)’s Politbureau member Pinarayi Vijayan and 16 women were on the list of 124 candidates the CPI(M)-led Opposition lDF announced on Wednesday for the crucial May 16 election to the 140-member Kerala Assembly.
The lDF thus took a clear lead over its chief rival, Congress-led ruling UDF, in which discussions for selecting candidates had hit a hard wall due to disputes over fielding graft-accused leaders, in the preparations for the election. lDF convener Vaikom Viswan said that the front’s manifesto would be released on April 5.
As per the list released by Viswan in Thiruvananthapuram, media personalities MV Nikesh Kumar and Veena George and film stars Mukesh and KB Ganesh Kumar will be lDF candidates. While Nikesh will be fielded in Azheecode in Kannur district as an Independent candidate, Veena will contest under the official CPI(M) symbol in Aranmula in Pathanamthitta.
“We are presenting these candidates with the perspective of building a corruption-free, secular, developed Kerala,” said Viswan while releasing the list in which the names of 90 of the total 92 candidates of the CPI(M) and 25 of the 27 aspirants of the CPI figured. The names of the remaining 16 candidates will be announced “at the earliest”, said Vaikom Viswan.
As per the list, a total of 43 sitting MlAs of the lDF will be contesting in the election. The list of CPI(M) candidates carries the names of 12 women including its central committee member KK Shylaja while the CPI’s list has four women on it. “We have taken particular care to ensure reasonable representation of youth and women,” said Viswan.
Pinarayi Vijayan, projected by many in the party and outside as the chief minister candidate of the CPI(M), is fighting the election from Dharmadom in Kannur district under which his native village, Pinarayi, comes. KK Narayanan had won the seat for the Marxist party in the 2011 election by a margin of over 15,000 votes.
Vijayan launched his election campaign on Wednesday by offering floral tributes at Parappuram of Pinarayi where Kerala’s communist movement had taken birth. Dharmadom is said to be the safest seat available in Kerala for Vijayan and observers say that this is exactly the reason why he selected it to contest.
Achuthanandan will be fighting the election from the Malampuzha constituency in Palakkad district for the fourth consecutive time. In 2001, he had won the seat by a margin of just 4,703 votes while the margin grew to over 20,000 in 2006. In the 2011 election, he was elected from Malampuzha by a margin of over 23,000 votes.
Film star Mukesh is the Marxist party’s candidate in Kollam. His candidature had created serious problems in the party there with a strong section batting for former minister PK Gurudasan, the sitting MlA. Movie star KB Ganesh Kumar, a former minister, is the candidate of the Kerala Congress (B), supported by the lDF, in Pathanapuram in Kollam district.
The list of candidates announced on Wednesday also included the four aspirants of the Janadhipathya Kerala Congress, a party floated earlier this month by the rebels of the Kerala Congress (M). Kadannappally Ramachandran, the lone candidate of the Congress (S), will contest the election from Kannur constituency.
In the meantime, 96-year-old communist leader KR Gowri on Wednesday openly attacked the CPI(M) for not allotting even a single seat to her party, the JSS which had left the UDF recently but failed to get entry into the lDF.
“It is betrayal. We may be a small party but betrayal is betrayal,” said Gowri.