Thrissur Pooram festival.
Credit: Reuters File Photo
Thrissur: Though curtains came down on the Thrissur Pooram festivities on Saturday after a scintillating fireworks display, the fervour is yet to die down at the cultural capital of Kerala thanks to the triangular electoral battle for the Lok Sabha seat in the offing, barely a week away.
Actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi of BJP is hopeful of opening the party’s account in the state while V S Sunil Kumar of the CPI is on a mission to win back the seat the party lost to the Congress in 2019.
The Congress pulled off a masterstroke by fielding senior leader K Muraleedharan, the son of former Chief Minister K Karunakaran, to thwart BJP’s attempts to tap Congress votes by giving a red carpet welcome to Karunakaran’s daughter Padmaja Venugopal.
Huge turnouts at the campaign meetings of all three candidates reflect the importance of the seat.
As Suresh Gopi passed through the narrow streets of Athoor, people in large numbers, especially women and children, could be seen eagerly awaiting him despite their busy morning routines. Though Gopi limited his address to a request for votes, the BJP camp was highlighting his humanitarian initiatives.
Gopi, who fared well at Thrissur in the last Lok Sabha and Assembly polls, has been engaged in development and welfare activities in the constituency. His gestures like offering a golden crown to a church were considered as a bid to woo the considerable Christian votes, though the rival camps countered it by questioning the gold content in the crown.
Gopi, who was also a Rajya Sabha MP, has the strong backing of the national leadership with Prime Minister Narendra Modi even attending his daughter’s marriage recently. BJP also highlights the cooperative bank scams in which left-front leaders are involved.
It was by around 11 am that the Congress candidate reached the Ollur Church Junction. Local people and shopkeepers could be seen eagerly listening to him as he stressed the need to resist BJP’s “attempts to sabotage the country’s secularism.”
Muraleedharan, who is a sitting MP of Vadakara in north Kerala, had even commenced ground works for the seat when the Congress’s strategic move to field him at Thrissur by replacing sitting MP T N Prathapan came about. The BJP seems to have felt the heat of Congress’s counter-move as Padmaja could not be prominently seen in the campaign meetings of BJP in Thrissur.
Even though the CPI has been portrayed as a party struggling for existence, at Thrissur the picture is different. Despite the scorching sun, many supporters, including children to elderly women, could be seen waiting at Mannuthy - Ayyankunnu regions to receive Sunil Kumar.
“You can see from the people’s enthusiasm that we will make it to the Lok Sabha,” a confident Sunil Kumar told DH.
However, there are concerns that anti-incumbency against the Left Front government in Kerala and hiccups in the conduct of Thrissur Pooram could affect the chances of Sunil Kumar.