By Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net,
Vengara (Malappuram): Had it been any other assembly constituency I would not have compared the quality of road shows of Muslim League workers to the winnability of its candidates but don’t forget that it is Vengara from where PK Kunjalikkutty, the most powerful man in the Muslim League, is fighting elections this time around. Only pictures could tell you the political frenzy of the party workers here just before the closing of the much heated election campaign in Kerala. Needless to say Muslim League general secretary is expected to win from the constituency which is also nearby his home town. The worth mentioning fact here is that even the LDF expects Kunjalikkutty to win by a huge margin that’s why it didn’t field a very strong candidate. KP Ismael, an INL leader, is challenging Kunjalikkutty in this constituency.
Election jeep of Muslim League in Vengara (Malappuram)
The moment I entered Vengara I faced thousands of crowd gathered to watch the road shows by the Muslim League workers, showing almost the political macho of their party. You ask anybody about Kunjalikkutty and he will tell you how he is the big political leader of the League and how he is sure to win. A piece of advice to everybody visiting Vengara, don’t ask people about ice cream parlour scandal otherwise you will get beaten.
Unfortunately I dared to show red to bulls and asked people about the case which got me almost beaten by Kunjalikkutty supporters. Thanks to my friend who was also my translator in this case, who tried to portray my question as a gift of language problems posed by my being an English-speaking North Indian. People told me that allegations of sex scandal against their leader were just an LDF conspiracy.
Muslim League supporters highlighting the party’s flag
Many say that Vengara is one of the strongholds of the Muslim League and is the most secure seat for the party. But why the most senior leader of the party had to contest from the most easy-to-win constituency? Does it show a sense of insecurity on Kunjalikkutty’s part? “Sure it does,” says Jabir Mushtari, a journalist with The Hindu, Calicut bureau. The sense of insecurity can be accessed by the fact that Kunjalikkutty didn’t contest even from Malappuram town, again a Muslim League stronghold. Mushtari says that the League allegedly asked a PR agency to do a survey in Vengara, just to find out the chances of Kunjalikkutty’s winnability, which is quite ironic as the Constituency is one of the strongholds of the League. It was only after the agency declared that the chances of winnability are quite high, that the general secretary of the party filed his election papers from Vengara.
But why Kunjalikkutty became so insecure this time as not only UDF’s chances to rule (Kerala is being ruled by UDF and LDF alternately since last several years) was quite high but there was also anti-incumbency feeling against the LDF? There are two reasons, says Mushtari. Kunjalikkutty faced severe criticism from people within his own party and outside after the ice cream parlour scandal which was also a set-back to the party. Second and most important is that his defeat at the hands of KT Jaleel in 2006 was a shock both to the party and Kunjalikkutty himself. Given the risk fraught past, Kunjalikkutty didn’t want to take any chance because any otherwise possibility could have also questioned his leadership in the party, says the The Hindu journo.
According to reports the only scare which Kunjalikkutty’s supporters have is that the crowd gathered to listen to Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan was much bigger than what it was in Kunjalikkutty’s case but it doesn’t pose such a big problem.