By IANS,
Thiruvananthapuram : With the Kerala assembly polls around the corner, former chief minister and Congress leader Oommen Chandy exuded confidence, saying his party-led combine will win at least 100 of the 140 assembly seats.
“We will win a minimum of 100 seats. If we are able to hit the campaign trail at the earliest and do not have much issues in the seat sharing with the allies. If this happens, then our number will be even higher,” Chandy, who is widely expected to lead the campaign of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF), told IANS in a brief chat.
Elections are to be held April 13 and the results would be out May 13.
Expressing hopes that there would be no problems in inking the seat sharing alliance, he admitted there could some glitches on some seats.
“Is it not natural that every ally, including the Congress, would like to contest more number of seats? And this time, mind you we have more number of parties too,” Chandy said.
The UDF in Kerala comprises the Congress, Kerala Congress-Mani, Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), Socialist Janata Democratic (Virendra Kumar), Kerala Congress-Balakrishna (KC-B), JSS, Kerala Congress (Jacob), Communist Marxist Party, Revolutionary Socialist Party (Baby John) and Indian National League (INL).
Of these Socialist Janata Democratic and INL crossed over from the Left Democratic Front (LDF) last year.
The LDF, in power since 2006, is widely expected to lose to the UDF in the assembly polls. For decades, the two political combines have been voted to power alternately.
While the LDF has been losing ground to the opposition with setbacks in 2009 Lok Sabha polls and local bodies elections in October, the UDF has been hit by scandals and scams.
“With regards to former minister and KC-B party chief R. Balakrishna Pillai, who is now in jail, there seems to be a sympathy wave in his favour and in his home district of Kollam. This is because the manner in which (Chief Minister V.S.) Achuthanandan has been so contemptuous of Pillai. Yes, it is the apex court that sent him to jail, but he was exonerated by the Kerala High Court,” Chandy, 67, said.
Top UDF leader and Kerala Congress (B) supremo Pillai was sentenced to one year in jail in a two decade-old corruption case when he was the state power minister in the mid-1980s.
Achuthanandan, in his personal capacity, took the case to the apex court after the UDF leader was exonerated by the Kerala High Court in 2004.
P.K. Kunhalikutty, a top IUML leader and an UDF ally, was involved in a sex scandal that allegedly used an ice cream parlour in Kozhikode as its base.
The case hit the headlines again last month when Kunhalikutty’s close relative K.A. Rauf disclosed that the former influenced the witness and two judges in the case.
But Chandy maintained the case will not have any backlash as Kunhalikutty is being “hunted by the present government to make cheap political gains”.
“It is unfortunate that the Left government is unwilling to go into the polls on the basis of what they have done in the past five years, and instead they are banking on cheap politics. We have nothing to fear because we have full confidence in the people,” said Chandy, a legislator for nearly 40 years.
He said the Left government and the chief minister will not be able to get away by raising such issues, “Achuthanandan will run into rough weather shortly,” he said.