Congress-led UDF and CPI(M)-headed lDF, the chief political rivals of Kerala who have been ruling the State alternately every five years, believed that no third force can penetrate into the State, until the grand appearance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the high-voltage BJP-NDA campaign for the May 16 Assembly election.
Modi has been in Kerala for campaigning only for two days so far, and the total time he spent on his speeches at four venues was just two hours, but those four speeches seem to have been more than sufficient to shake their confidence, if the change in the tones of their responses to the challenge the BJP is posing in the election is any indication.
The anxiety and confusion created in the Congress camp by Modi's campaign role was obvious from the way Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, heading the scam-beleaguered UDF regime, posted an "open letter" on his Facebook page asking the PM not to "fool Keralites". This was the first time Chandy had entered into a direct argument with the BJP-NDA in this election.
"In his urgency to term Modi's development concept as hollow, Chandy seems to have become a victim of the foot-in-mouth disease himself," says senior journalist Satheesan. "His complaint that the Modi regime had done nothing to shore up rubber prices, was a self-goal as the UPA headed by his party was instrumental in creating the rubber crisis," he added.
According to a Kochi-based psephologist, Modi had deliberately formulated his speeches in such a way that he denied his opponents the opportunity to criticize him over the usual minority-majority arguments whenever discussions took place on the BJP. "I would say Modi had totally avoided what common man calls 'politics' from his speeches," he said.
Observers say that the contents of the four speeches delivered by Modi in two days - May 6 and May 8 - have woken up the leaders of the UDF and the left to the reality that there are enough socio-economic issues that they have not attended to, which a third force like BJP can easily use to sneak into Kerala's power structure.
The Prime Minister had woven his four speeches around some of the burning issues Kerala was facing - like drinking water shortage, rising unemployment, soaring public debt, falling agricultural production, closure of PSUs, etc - and held in a matter-of-fact fashion the Congress and the left, which had ruled the State all these years, responsible for all those ills.
Modi had also given special care in his speeches to convincingly describe the shortcomings in the development of the State as a result of the alleged hypocrisy of the Congress and the Marxists. He also attacked in the harshest available words to blast the Marxists and the Congress for playing their alleged politics of adjustment in the State.
"When a pre-poll survey in April-end predicted the possibility of the BJP opening account by winning three to five seats in the 140-seat Assembly in this election, the UDF and lDF had discounted this possibility by saying that surveys had never been error-free. But they may not be feeling that confident now," said the psephologist.
Even several Congressmen and Marxists are now admitting - secretly, indeed - that their parties had perhaps committed a serious mistake in properly assessing the increase in the strength of the BJP in Kerala. They also admit that the Modi campaign has given a big push to the Kerala BJP's electoral efforts.
On Monday, a marked difference was seen in the approach of top Congress leaders to the issues of BJP and Modi's campaign. Chief Minister Chandy, who is not known to devote much time to deal with the BJP in his speeches, was seen using most of his speech in Thrissur to criticise Modi for levelling charges against his party president Sonia Gandhi over the chopper deal.
"The Prime Minister lowered himself to the level of an ordinary BJP worker to raise false allegations against Soniaji," Chandy said at a UDF election rally at which the Congress president spoke. Similarly, State Congress president VM Sudheeran also devoted much of his speech to tell his party workers about the need to work for a "BJP-Mukt India".