Everyone agrees that the ‘Modi wave’ is a reality at least in one sphere – the national media. This unfortunately means that any state where the political battle is not going to play a role in either helping or halting the grand ambitions of Bharatiya Janata Party Prime Minister candidate Narendra Modi gets ignored by the Delhi press. Even if the local battles are fascinating.
Kerala might be heading into yet another face-off between groupings led by the Congress and the Left – both of which look tired and set to be wiped out nationally. But no state can be called boring if its rulers spent months occupied by something called the ‘Ice Cream Parlour Sex Scandal’, which involved accusations that an ice cream store in Kozhikode was actually functioning as a brothel and that it was owned by politicians. From a Caesar-esque political murder to a fraudulent solar panel company, a battle over ecology and the ghosts of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the state’s politics has everything – except for a say in who forms the government in Delhi. It’s even set to go down to the wire, with one opinion poll suggesting the difference in seats between the two sides is within the margin of error.
Team Solar
The frontrunner is the Congress-led United Democratic Front. This alliance had picked up 16 of the state’s 20 Lok Sabha seats in 2009, and it also controls the Kerala Assembly, albeit by just 73 seats to the Left’s 67. But its leader, chief minister Oommen Chandy, could also end up being its chief liability.
It emerged last year that Team Solar, a renewable energy company, was actually a scam that had duped customers and investors of crores of cash. The accused couple at the centre of this scandal – Saritha Nair and Biju Radhakrishnan – had gone around taking on wealthy investors and customers, hiring actors as brand ambassadors and conferring titles like the ‘Virgin Earth Golden Feather Environment Award’ to politicians and celebrities. When it came to actually installing the solar panels, however, Nair and Radhakrishnan failed to do so.
The solar panel scam took a political turn last year following revelations that Nair had connections that went all the way to Chandy’s office. Three officials from the chief minister’s office are alleged to have made phone calls to Nair, a detail that prompted the opposition to turn the ‘solar panel scam’ into one of their key poll planks. Since then there have been consistent calls for Chandy to resign and though he has ordered a probe and made some changes to his staff, the Team Solar scam remains a Congress weak spot that the opposition will target.
Murder most foul
Instead of sitting back and simply taking the hit, however, Chandy’s Congress is all set to fight fire with a much more scandalous fire. The opposition Left Democratic Front has had a lot of infighting over the last few years. One leader, TP Chandrasekharan, was shunted out of the CPI(M) in 2009 and branded a 'renegade' for starting a small party of his own. On June 4, 2012, Chandrasekharan was found dead, with dozens of stab wounds on his body. Earlier this year, a trial court handed out life sentences to 11 men for the murder, including three local CPI(M) leaders. Ever since, the Congress has brought up the CPI(M)’s 'murder politics' at every given opportunity, so much that the Election Commission has now given a directive saying political leaders can no longer bring up the Chandrasekharan case in the campaigning.
Political ecology
If the Congress-led UDF is forced to be quiet on that matter, however, it will have to fill the silence by explaining its stand on an ecological policy battle that has been rocking the state assembly for some time. The Kasturirangan Report, which lays out recommendations on preserving the Western Ghats, has turned into an emotive issue that has thrown up some unusual bedfellows in Kerala.
Traditionally a green party and ideologically atheistic, the Left finds itself in the awkward place of siding with the High Range Protection Council, an activist body backed by the Catholic Church and farmers who oppose many of the report’s recommendations. The UDF ended up giving in to the Church and the farmer lobby, asking the Centre to leave out 3,000 sq km of Kerala’s non-forest land that was supposed to be part of the Environmentally Sensitive Area – which the Ministry of Environment and Forests would eventually do.
Yet the Left is still arguing that the UDF didn’t do enough to preserve the High Range Protection Council’s interests, to the extent that the LDF is supporting a non-Communist Council member in the Idukki Lok Sabha seat. And that’s not the only place where the Communists have shed their ideology for political expediency.
Between the CPI(M) and the CPI, six of the 20 Lok Sabha candidates from the Left will feature non-party candidates aimed squarely at winning back those constituencies from the UDF. In many of those cases the candidates have been picked based on the community or religion they represent, rather than their adherence to the LDF’s ideals.
A tigress from AAP
The intrigue, however, isn’t just limited to the state’s big two alliances. The Aam Aadmi Party has put up a number of journalists as candidates for Lok Sabha seats across the country, but its candidate from Kochi has a connection that goes beyond ordinary press work. Former CNN journalist Anita Pratap’s candidature may not be of much consequence considering she is up against the Congress stalwart KV Thomas, but her history of covering the LTTE – including writing a book famously sympathetic to the Tigers – as well as her marriage to a Norwegian citizen have caused some consternation on the right.
And that’s just a snapshot of the state’s many political battles, which include everything from complicated religious-caste calculations to a Lok Sabha candidate with total assets of just Rs 750. But because it’s not about RaGa vs NaMo vs Kejriwal, Kerala’s 2014 Lok Sabha race will remain the most intriguing political battle you weren't paying attention to.
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Kerala might be heading into yet another face-off between groupings led by the Congress and the Left – both of which look tired and set to be wiped out nationally. But no state can be called boring if its rulers spent months occupied by something called the ‘Ice Cream Parlour Sex Scandal’, which involved accusations that an ice cream store in Kozhikode was actually functioning as a brothel and that it was owned by politicians. From a Caesar-esque political murder to a fraudulent solar panel company, a battle over ecology and the ghosts of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the state’s politics has everything – except for a say in who forms the government in Delhi. It’s even set to go down to the wire, with one opinion poll suggesting the difference in seats between the two sides is within the margin of error.
Team Solar
The frontrunner is the Congress-led United Democratic Front. This alliance had picked up 16 of the state’s 20 Lok Sabha seats in 2009, and it also controls the Kerala Assembly, albeit by just 73 seats to the Left’s 67. But its leader, chief minister Oommen Chandy, could also end up being its chief liability.
It emerged last year that Team Solar, a renewable energy company, was actually a scam that had duped customers and investors of crores of cash. The accused couple at the centre of this scandal – Saritha Nair and Biju Radhakrishnan – had gone around taking on wealthy investors and customers, hiring actors as brand ambassadors and conferring titles like the ‘Virgin Earth Golden Feather Environment Award’ to politicians and celebrities. When it came to actually installing the solar panels, however, Nair and Radhakrishnan failed to do so.
The solar panel scam took a political turn last year following revelations that Nair had connections that went all the way to Chandy’s office. Three officials from the chief minister’s office are alleged to have made phone calls to Nair, a detail that prompted the opposition to turn the ‘solar panel scam’ into one of their key poll planks. Since then there have been consistent calls for Chandy to resign and though he has ordered a probe and made some changes to his staff, the Team Solar scam remains a Congress weak spot that the opposition will target.
Murder most foul
Instead of sitting back and simply taking the hit, however, Chandy’s Congress is all set to fight fire with a much more scandalous fire. The opposition Left Democratic Front has had a lot of infighting over the last few years. One leader, TP Chandrasekharan, was shunted out of the CPI(M) in 2009 and branded a 'renegade' for starting a small party of his own. On June 4, 2012, Chandrasekharan was found dead, with dozens of stab wounds on his body. Earlier this year, a trial court handed out life sentences to 11 men for the murder, including three local CPI(M) leaders. Ever since, the Congress has brought up the CPI(M)’s 'murder politics' at every given opportunity, so much that the Election Commission has now given a directive saying political leaders can no longer bring up the Chandrasekharan case in the campaigning.
Political ecology
If the Congress-led UDF is forced to be quiet on that matter, however, it will have to fill the silence by explaining its stand on an ecological policy battle that has been rocking the state assembly for some time. The Kasturirangan Report, which lays out recommendations on preserving the Western Ghats, has turned into an emotive issue that has thrown up some unusual bedfellows in Kerala.
Traditionally a green party and ideologically atheistic, the Left finds itself in the awkward place of siding with the High Range Protection Council, an activist body backed by the Catholic Church and farmers who oppose many of the report’s recommendations. The UDF ended up giving in to the Church and the farmer lobby, asking the Centre to leave out 3,000 sq km of Kerala’s non-forest land that was supposed to be part of the Environmentally Sensitive Area – which the Ministry of Environment and Forests would eventually do.
Yet the Left is still arguing that the UDF didn’t do enough to preserve the High Range Protection Council’s interests, to the extent that the LDF is supporting a non-Communist Council member in the Idukki Lok Sabha seat. And that’s not the only place where the Communists have shed their ideology for political expediency.
Between the CPI(M) and the CPI, six of the 20 Lok Sabha candidates from the Left will feature non-party candidates aimed squarely at winning back those constituencies from the UDF. In many of those cases the candidates have been picked based on the community or religion they represent, rather than their adherence to the LDF’s ideals.
A tigress from AAP
The intrigue, however, isn’t just limited to the state’s big two alliances. The Aam Aadmi Party has put up a number of journalists as candidates for Lok Sabha seats across the country, but its candidate from Kochi has a connection that goes beyond ordinary press work. Former CNN journalist Anita Pratap’s candidature may not be of much consequence considering she is up against the Congress stalwart KV Thomas, but her history of covering the LTTE – including writing a book famously sympathetic to the Tigers – as well as her marriage to a Norwegian citizen have caused some consternation on the right.
And that’s just a snapshot of the state’s many political battles, which include everything from complicated religious-caste calculations to a Lok Sabha candidate with total assets of just Rs 750. But because it’s not about RaGa vs NaMo vs Kejriwal, Kerala’s 2014 Lok Sabha race will remain the most intriguing political battle you weren't paying attention to.