Rival camps offer divergent views of government as they battle it out in Nilambur 

With open campaigning for the high-stakes Nilambur Assembly byelection set to conclude on Tuesday, opposing fronts offered voters starkly different views of the second Pinarayi Vijayan government.

Opposing campaigns battled exhaustively over human-wildlife conflict mitigation, the economically crippling wildlife raids on farmlands, the cratering of the agrarian economy, the “shoddy” development of National Highway 66, and the “abandoned” LIFE housing mission for homeless people.

Even as they sparred over courting communal forces for votes, the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF), and Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) said almost in the same breath on Monday that neither the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nor the independent candidacy of P.V. Anvar would have any impact on the outcome of the bypoll.

Notably, the UDF’s “acceptance” of the allegedly radical Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami support continued to dominate the political narrative in Nilambur, even as opposing campaigns intensified their door-to-door efforts to ensure voter turnout.

The Jamaat factor

Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] State secretary M.V. Govindan alleged that the UDF’s desperation to court the Jamaat-e-Islami in Nilambur stems from the fact that the LDF’s good governance had rendered Opposition’s campaign toothless. The UDF’s brazen move to give political space to the Jamaat-e-Islami raised the spectre of empowering Hindu majoritarian forces in Kerala.

Mr. Govindan said the BJP was not a factor in Nilambur. “The votes won by the BDJS, a BJP ally, in previous elections, would not fall into the NDA’s kitty in this byelection,” he said. 

‘Just also-rans’

All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary K.C. Venugopal said the fight was between the LDF and the UDF. He said the poll outcome would relegate others in the fray to also-rans. Mr. Venugopal said the LDF government had left the State’s infrastructure development, welfare, and economic health in a shambles. He said the LIFE Mission had ground to a halt and the LDF had withheld social welfare pension payment for the needy and released them only on election eve as ‘voter-inducement.’ The second LDF government has nothing to crow about and is raising the spectre of communal politics to hoodwink the voters.

He accused the CPI(M) of raising the bogey of communalism citing Jamaat-e-Islami’s support for the UDF. He said the LDF’s gambit was to provoke voting on religious lines in Nilambur.

“If some persons support the UDF, it does not necessarily entail that Congress endorses their ideological line. The Congress is not an arrogant party to shun the support of voters, irrespective of the ideological leanings or faith,” he said.

Published - June 16, 2025 07:05 pm IST