Mahila Congress workers celebrate the victory of party candidate Chandy Oommen in the Puthuppally by-election, in Thiruvananthapuram, Friday, Sept. 8, 2023.
Credit: PTI Photo
For a Kerala by-poll where the result was never in doubt, Congress’ Chandy Oommen’s total annihilation of Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Jaick C Thomas by 37,719 votes, embarrassingly close to what the latter polled at 42,425, has thrown up quite a few topics of debate. They vary from pragmatic, whether the verdict is a referendum on Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, to the surrealistic of whether Oommen Chandy from the pale would keep shaping the electoral outcome outside Puthupally. The rhetoric swings from being vapid to nuanced, the arguments from tedious to layered.
While the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) is understandably keen to interpret this emphatic victory more as a vote of discontent against the Vijayan government, the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) is downplaying it as a one-time sympathy vote in the late Chief Minister, and, in the process, absolving the state leadership of any blemish. Chandy Oommen’s margin of victory, which is more than what his father achieved in the 2011 assembly polls (33,255 votes) surely validates the anti-incumbency message way louder than the sympathy factor.
One would expect the Left government to be worried, considering the limited time before the 2024 Parliament elections. But not too much, as both the Congress and its allies as well as the Left parties are part of the I.N.D.I.A alliance; given this the LDF is sure to do better than what it did in 2019 where it won just one of the 20 seats from Kerala. Yet the hapless apparatchiks who were only too happy to mindlessly toe the party line seem quite perturbed by the haze of nepotism and corruption that keeps looming over their leaders.
It is now evident that the swing voters went back to the UDF fold. Consider the polling percentage over the past three elections in Puthupally. In 2016, when 1,34,055 out of 1,73,203 (77.4 per cent) cast their votes, Oommen Chandy’s margin of victory was 27,092. Whereas, in 2021, when Oommen Chandy’s victory margin was reduced to 9,044 votes, voting percentage was 74.9 percent.
Going by that logic, when the polling fell further to 72.91 per cent in 2023, one could argue Thomas should have been getting close to pulling off an upset. What has transpired is quite the opposite. If Thomas polled 44,505 in 2016, it rose to 54,328 votes in 2021. There is no way the Left voters’ faith in him dwindling by almost 12,000 votes other than it being a sharp message to the ruling CPI(M).
Of course, one must also factor in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s votes which have been in a free fall — from 15,993 in 2016 to 11,694 in 2021, and plummeting to 6,558 in 2023. The saffron party polled around 20,000 votes in the Puthupally constituency during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Clearly, the reality of such a lopsided margin raises a plethora of worries for the Vijayan-led government. Did it cross the line by hounding Oommen Chandy using the solar case literally till his death? How much longer would the swing voters continue to be swayed by Vijayan’s strong-man image? Will the Left cadre do the unthinkable, and start openly questioning Vijayan’s winnability? Also, what does this landslide victory mean for the Kerala polity, more specifically the future of the Congress to have Chandy Oommen in a leadership position?
It would indeed be naïve to expect him to be hoisted to the level of Ramesh Chennithala or V D Satheesan or Shashi Tharoor. It is quite probable that Chandy Oommen would gravitate towards the Congress A faction that was till recently led by his father. Even there, he will have to carve out his own space as none would be ready to hand it to him on a platter.
With the pitfalls of young scions trying to lead from the shadows of their parents are all too familiar to the Congress, Chandy Oommen has the next 30 months to prove he is a chip of the old block before his tenure in this Assembly gets over. Therein lies the rub. Kerala would be keenly watching whether the son has the charisma and political dexterity of the father.
If Chandy Oommen learns to stand on own feet, minus the massive prop that is the legacy of his father by 2026, that will be a bonus for the Congress, looking to wrest back control it lost in 2016.
(Vinod Mathew is a senior journalist.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.