Bickering in the State unit of the Congress over the defeat of party candidates in its strongholds of Thrissur, Chalakudy and Idukki seemed to be garnering strength on Saturday with K.P. Dhanapalan, P.C. Chacko, and Dean Kuriakose airing their views in public on the debacle.
The Congress suffered a heavy defeat in the Thrissur constituency. Mr. Dhanapalan was defeated by Left Democratic Front’s C.N. Jayadevan (CPI) by a margin of 38,227 votes.
In Chalakudy, which includes three Assembly segments in Thrissur district, LDF-backed Independent Innocent beat Mr. Chacko by a margin of 13,884 votes.
In the Alathur Lok Sabha constituency, which included Chelakkara, Kunnamkulam, and Wadakkanchery of Thrissur district, K.A. Sheeba of the Congress was defeated by LDF’s P.K. Biju with a margin of 37,312 votes.
“Mr. Chacko [who represented Thrissur in the outgoing Lok Sabha] was facing a few issues arising from factional differences; he was not in good terms with the Church either. This, he thought, would harm his prospects and therefore wanted to seek the mandate from Chalakudy. Subsequently, the party high command, which had earlier taken a stance that sitting MPs needn’t switch constituencies, asked me to make the swap. I was called to Delhi, where A.K. Antony, V.M Sudheeran, Ramesh Chennithala, Mukul Wasnik and Ghulam Nabi Azad assured me of victory in both seats under the new arrangement. I wasn’t keen about Thrissur and refused to contest, but then they said the onus was on the party to ensure victory,” Mr. Dhanapalan told The Hindu over telephone.
Chacko’s claim Mr. Chacko, however, contended that the results wouldn’t have been any different had there been no seat swap.
“I don’t want to comment on Mr. Dhanapalan’s accusations. Let the party assess the results,” he said.
“Innocent [LDF Independent candidate who won from Chalakkudy] polled 30,000 more votes than the CPI(M) candidate U.P. Joseph had in the 2009 polls. Add to that the vote share of the AAP, BJP, Welfare Party and the Social Democratic Party of India. The question is where have the traditional Congress votes gone? Nearly a lakh votes from our share were taken away by others,” he said over the phone.
‘‘The Congress will do some serious soul-searching. We are analysing the defeat in Thrissur, Chalakudy and Alathur. We are also analysing the votes polled by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Aam Aadmi Party in Thrissur. We want to find out if we lost our traditional votes,” said Thrissur District Congress Committee (DCC) president O. Abdurahman Kutty. Mr. Kutty refuted the allegation that Congress workers had not campaigned well for the election.
