Riding on a consolidation of minority votes in its favour and the anti-incumbency factor against the LDF, the Congress retained all three Assembly seats in the Kerala bypolls. The bypolls to Kannur, Ernakulam and Alappuzha constituencies were necessitated after the sitting legislators were elected to the Lok Sabha in the recent election.

The Congress had fielded candidates from minority communities in all three constituencies even as the Alappuzha and Kannur Assembly seats had no recent history of Muslims contesting on a Congress ticket. The CPM had, in a departure from its usual practice of fielding candidates from Christian and upper class Hindu communities, chosen to field a backward Hindu candidate from Ernakulam.

The huge victory margin of former CPM member A P Abdullakutty in Kannur has served as a double blow for the party. He defeated CPM heavyweight M V Jayarajan with a margin of 12,043, nearly 4,000 votes more than Congress muscleman K Sudhakaran’s share in the Assembly election in 2006. The CPM had marshalled its entire party machinery in Kannur to ensure the defeat of the party renegade and had highlighted the issue of political morality in the two-time MP switching to the Congress overnight. The newly floated right wing Muslim party Social Democratic Party of India bagged 3,114 votes in its electoral debut in the constituency which comprises nearly 40 per cent Muslims.

In Ernakulam, Congress candidate and former state minister Dominic Presentation defeated P N Sinulal of the CPI (M) with a margin of 8620 votes. Though a Congress citadel, Ernakulam has instances of electing CPI (M)-backed Independents. The relatively low profile CPM candidate in commercial capital of the state failed to win the middle class and upper middle class voters and BJP’s firebrand Shoba Surendran reduced the chances of a Hindu consolidation in favour of the CPM candidate.

... contd.