Sniping, muckraking, political fireworks and final pitch to voters mark election eve ‘silent campaigning’

Election officials collecting polling materials from Pattom St. Mary’s Higher Secondary School in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday.

As the countdown clock portentously wound down to the Lok Sabha elections on Friday, the opposing alliances in Kerala spent the penultimate day on Thursday sniping at each other, indulging in electoral agenda-setting muckraking, and making their final pitches to voters. 

The so-called day of silent campaigning was anything but quiet. Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president K. Sudhakaran ignited the political fireworks by accusing Left Democratic Front (LDF) convener E.P. Jayarajan of plotting to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and backtracking at the last moment, fearing violent reprisal from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)]. 

Mr. Sudhakaran timed the accusation to offset the CPI(M)‘s campaign that the KPCC president, who is contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Kannur, was the Sangh Parivar’s face in the Congress and also the archangel of the clandestine and anti-LDF “Congress-Indian Union Muslim League (IUML)-BJP (KOLIBI)“ clique. 

BJP leader and the party’s candidate from the Alappuzha parliamentary segment Sobha Surendran and T.G. Nandakumar, a self-styled political powerbroker, endorsed Mr. Sudhakaran’s accusation in separate press conferences. 

Mr. Jayarajan denied the charge and said Mr. Sudhakaran had “lost his mind.” He predicted that the United Democratic Front (UDF) would unravel once the LS results were out, and the IUML and Kerala Congress would strike out independently. 

Freebies to voters

Other controversies also fired up the election-eve narrative. The LDF and the Opposition accused the BJP of attempting to woo voters in Wayanad by distributing provision kits. The BJP has denied the charge. 

Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan took issue with Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena’s tour to allegedly “sway Church leaders to the BJP’s cause.” He petitioned the Election Commission of India (ECI). 

Apprehensions about last-minute shifts in voting behaviour also niggled at the minds of candidates. The Congress and the BJP raised the bogey of CPI(M) violence to chill voters, eliciting a sharp denial from the LDF. 

With the BJP in the reckoning as a third force and deeply polarising issues at stake, the electoral contest could narrow to a dazzlingly close three-cornered race in a few fiercely contested constituencies. The BJP repeatedly raised the spectre of tactical cross-voting by LDF and UDF workers to hinder its chances in the State.

The opposing campaigns mobilised armies of supporters to hit neighbourhoods and knock on doors, an arguably persuasive political gambit on the silent campaign day. 

Candidates popped in and out of the headquarters of influential social organisations in a last-minute bid to muster support.