Represented once by Communist stalwarts like E.P. Gopalan and E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Pattambi regained its national prominence after a long interval by letting Mohammed Mohsin, a close confidant of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, to wrest it from Congress leader C.P. Muhammad, who had been representing the constituency for the last 15 years.
Pattambi was the only constituency where Kanhaiya Kumar and other JNU leaders like Aparajitha Raja had campaigned for the LDF. Mr. Mohsin, who contested on the CPI ticket, won with a majority of 7,404 votes. In the previous election, Mr. Muhammad had won with a majority of 12,475 votes.
Mr. Kumar, a member of the All India Students’ Federation (AISF), the students’ wing of the CPI, chose to campaign in Pattambi for his friend though he had declined the invitation to campaign for the Left in West Bengal and Kerala. He came to Pattambi because of the camaraderie he shared with Mr. Mohsin.
Hostel mates
Mr. Mohsin is currently the vice president of the JNU unit of the AISF. He and Mr. Kumar were hostel mates at JNU. The campaigners introduced Mr. Mohsin as one who stood close to Mr. Kumar during the latter’s speech after his release from jail. Mr. Mohsin is in the final leg of his research on social work at JNU. After graduating from Calicut University, he did Masters in social work at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, and M.Phil at Madras University.
Pattambi was the only constituency where JNU leader Kanhaiya Kumar campaigned for LDF
