Hey BJP-men, please don’t enter this compound to seek votes because this house has girls below ten years of age.”
“Hello Marxist, don’t come here requesting votes because there is a pregnant woman in the house.”
These are messages flashed on posters dangling from the gates and stuck to the compound walls of several houses of CPI(M) and BJP workers and sympathizers in the Kerala Assembly constituency of Chengannur where a by-election is to be held soon. These messages bear proof of the extent of ugliness to which Kerala parties would go in election campaigns.
The first poster, as everyone would guess, refers to the gang-rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir while the second one is used as a direct criticism against the CPI(M) over the recent incident in which a party leader in Kozhikode district kicked a pregnant young woman in his neighborhood in her stomach forcing her to undergo abortion.
This disgusting battle between the two sides is not confined to any particular region of the constituency but it is happening in all its 11 local administration areas making it obvious that it has not been triggered by a burst of imagination of just the house-owners but it is happening in accordance with planning and coordination.
Also, the wordings seen in such posters are similar if not same establishing this particular aspect. Printed posters with identical content also can be seen across the constituency. However, senior leaders of both CPI(M) and BJP are washing their hands off the malicious poll campaigning tactic though they do not deny such occurrences.
“Neither our party nor the lDF it leads has instructed its workers or sympathizers to do this,” said a senior CPI(M) leader from Budhanoor Panchayat in the constituency. “It is normal for the people to feel shocked about incidents like Kathua and Unnao and it is also quite normal for them to have bitter dislike for those who support the perpetrators,” he said.
The posters had first appeared in front of the houses of CPI(M) workers and the contents of all these posters referred to the Kathua incident and the alleged rape of a 17-year-old girl in Unnao in Uttar Pradesh but the references of the messages in pro-BJP posters range from the so-called Red terror perpetrated by Marxists to the failures of the lDF Government.
“These things happen locally and I am not sure if the houses that flash such posters belong to BJP sympathizers alone.
Even Congress people can have deep concerns about the atrocities being committed by the Marxists and the lapses of the CPI(M) regime. We have nothing to do with it,” said an NDA campaign manager based in Chengannur town.
However, the voters of Chengannur in general are of the opinion that such campaign techniques are not going to pay any dividends at all to the CPI(M) or the BJP.
“People are not interested in such ugly shows and we know that in most cases, people have displayed such posters at their houses under pressure,” said Santhosh Kumar, volunteer of a youth club in Chengannur.