Local body polls 2025: Unpredictability is the norm at Attingal municipality

A touch of predictability has marked local body elections in the Attingal municipality ever since the 1970s, with a change of script happening only once in this rather long period. Since 1979, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) has had the constituency in its grasp, with the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) managing to win only once, in 2000.

The electoral battlefield, which has witnessed direct fights between the LDF and the UDF, began changing in 2015, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost the second place by a whisker. The results that year, with LDF winning 22 wards, the UDF five and the BJP four, portended a shift which would become clear in the local body elections of 2020. While the LDF managed to retain the municipality by winning 18 of the 31 wards, the BJP sprang a surprise snatching the main Opposition party position from the UDF by winning seven wards, while the UDF ended up with six.

But, things can be highly unpredictable in grassroots-level politics as the BJP was to realise in 2024, when it lost the main Opposition party position following the resignation of two of its councillors for unspecified reasons. The LDF further bolstered its position by winning both byelections. Yet, the LDF has much reason to worry by the shift in voting patterns in the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, in which the BJP made major inroads into regions considered for long as left strongholds.

28-year streak for LDF

Since 2019, when it lost the Lok Sabha election from the Attingal constituency after an unchallenged run of 28 years, the LDF has been apprehensive of fortunes reversing in the Assembly and local body polls too, despite voter considerations being starkly different in these elections. In the Lok Sabha elections, the LDF candidate lost out by a slender margin of 684 votes to the UDF. But what worried it more were the gains made by the BJP, which increased its vote share from 24.97% to 31.64% with an increase of over 59,000 votes compared to the 2019 general elections.

Compared to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when it managed only 10% votes, the BJP’s growth in the constituency is quite significant. The fact that some of the gains have happened in the urban areas of Attingal has led to the LDF and UDF both looking at new ways of countering the saffron growth. Though the recent ward byelection gains give the LDF some confidence, it is no longer considering the municipality as an easy bet.