Polling for the byelections for the Chengannur Assembly constituency in Kerala is currently proceeding at a brisk place, taking advantage of the respite from overnight heavy rain.
According to reports, polling started at 7 am and in the first four hours, more than 30 per cent of the electorate had exercised their franchise.
The bypoll here was occasioned by the demise of sitting CPI(M) member KK Ramachandran Nair. Coming up soon after the Karnataka elections, it has attracted much interest locally.
The CPI(M), which heads the ruling Left Democratic Front, the Opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the BJP has invested huge political capital in Chengannur. The ruling LDF has fielded Saji Cherian, Secretary of the Alappuzha district unit of the CPI(M), and hopes to retain the seat.
D Vijayakumar is the candidate of the UDF, which wants to wrest from the LDF what was originally theirs for quite some time. The BJP has fielded the popular but reluctant PS Sreedharan Pillai and hopes to best the 2016 performance when he had run up as the runner-up with a record 42,682 votes.
Along with Chengannur in Kerala, polling is also taking place in nine Assembly constituencies in other states as also four Lok Sabha constituencies, among them Kairana in Uttar Pradesh.
Setback for BJP
The BJP game plan in Chengannur may have suffered a setback when the national leadership pulled away its state president Kummanam Rajasekharan just three days ahead of polls. The state leadership had apparently no clue as to what was happening, least of all Rajasekharan himself, who denied any knowledge after TV channels flashed the news.
For the record, he has been made the Governor in Mizoram, but the speed and the manner in which this was planned, executed, and announced has left political watchers here dazed. They promptly described it as a public disavowal in Rajasekharan's capacity to bring the warring factions in the state unit of the party to a truce.
The timing of the move could not have been more stark, since the BJP was seen to be putting up a tough fight against heavy odds thrown up by the tantrums of one of its own allies. The Ezhava front Bharath Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), prominent member of the state NDA unit, has not been seeing eye to eye with the BJP on a number of internal issues.
UDF hopeful
Meanwhile, the UDF's case may have been slightly strengthened after it brought around estranged ally Kerala Congress (Mani) on the even of the bypoll. Its another issue altogether that its ageing leader KM Mani had any other go after its entreaties to both the LDF and the NDA came a cropper during the intervening period.
Mani has had to leave the UDF, of which he was a founder leader, after he came under a cloud of corruption during his tenure as Finance Minister in the earlier regime. But the UDF as a whole has come in for some turmoil with Congress President Rahul Gandhi drafting senior leader and former chief minister Oommen Chandy as a general secretary.
This would mean that Chandy would need to shift his area of activity away from Kerala, dealing a body blow to the Congress faction pledging allegiance originally to AK Antony. The announcement came on the day of the bypoll and may not affect it materially, but implications for the party in the state could be far-reaching.