Nilambur bypoll in Kerala: Opposition UDF accuses LDF of stoking Islamophobia for Sangh Parivar votes

Kerala Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan | Photo Credit: K. Ragesh

Kerala’s Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan on Wednesday (June 18, 2025) accused the Left Democratic Front (LDF) campaign of stoking Islamophobia to consolidate its position among Sangh Parivar and hardline groups hailing from the other minority communities in the high-stakes Nilambur Assembly byelection on Thursday.

Mr. Satheesan’s riposte came as a counter to the LDF’s accusation that the Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) had sacrificed secular-democratic principles and brazenly solicited the support of the “radical Islamist” Jamaat-e-Islami for political expediency in Nilambur.

The LDF had also accused the UDF of gifting the Welfare Party of India (WPI), a political offshoot of the Jamaat-e-Islami, an affiliate position in the Opposition alliance, for the latter’s support in the bypoll. 

Mr. Satheesan rubbished the LDF’s “propaganda” and said the Jamaat-e-Islami had offered the UDF unconditional support in Nilambur. He added that the UDF did not share the Communist Party of India (Marxist)‘s [CPI(M)] view that Jamaat-e-Islami was a “terrorist organisation.”

Moreover, Mr. Satheesan said that the Jamaat-e-Islami was not anathema to the CPI(M) when it supported the LDF from 1996 to 2016. 

“The CPI(M) lost no time in branding the Jamaat-e-Islami as a terrorist outfit when the latter parted ways with the LDF. The organisation abandoned its old slogans and, in 2019, adopted the political line that the Congress is the sole bulwark against the ascendancy of the Sangh Parivar at the national level”, he added. 

Mr. Satheesan said the LDF had raised the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the Palestine issue and triple talaq to court Muslim votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections to undercut the UDF’s traditional voter base.

‘Majority appeasement’

When the gambit failed miserably, Mr. Satheesan said, the LDF turned to “majority appeasement” by demonising the Jamaat-e-Islami and repeatedly accusing the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leadership of telegraphing a fundamentalist line to its rank-and-file. 

“By pining wistfully in Nilambur about the CPI(M)-Jan Sangh alliance during the Emergency, the LDF is tacitly seeking Sangh Parivar votes. The Hindu Mahasabha responded by declaring support for the LDF in Nilambur, clearly signalling the RSS line in the byelection,” he said. 

Mr. Satheesan said the CPI(M) general secretary during the Emergency, Puchalapalli Sundarayya, had resigned his post and abandoned his Polit Bureau membership in protest against his party’s “revisionist” alliance with the Jan Sangh. 

“The late CPI leader C.K. Chandrappan had warned that any understanding or tacit alliance with the BJP against the Rajiv Gandhi government in the 1980s would sink the Left movement in the country. His words proved prescient. The CPI(M) lost its strongholds in West Bengal and Tripura and is now confined to Kerala”, he added. 

Mr. Satheesan said an overwhelming number of LDF supporters in Nilambur frowned upon the CPI(M)‘s “dalliance” with the Sangh Parivar, and they would throw in their lot with the Opposition alliance.

Published - June 18, 2025 01:31 pm IST