The maiden southern electoral foray of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in 2019 had catapulted the picturesque hill constituency of Wayanad — tucked in the Western Ghats, with its landslide-prone mountain faces and steep cliffs — into the national spotlight.
This time, Rahul is taking on CPI’s Annie Raja, general secretary of the party’s women’s wing and wife of general secretary D Raja. But Rahul’s contest against an INDIA alliance partner, and not someone from NDA, has soured Congress-Left relations, with Left leaders saying he should have directly taken on BJP, not an alliance partner.
This has already had an effect nationally. Left parties stayed away from the mass rally to mark the finale of Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, held in Mumbai on March 17, in marked contrast to the finale of Bharat Jodo Yatra in Jan 2023, when the 74-year-old D Raja was seen standing next to Rahul, amid heavy snowfall in J&K.
Inaugurating Annie’s election convention on March 16, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan was scathing in his criticism against Rahul. “LDF’s candidate is a national-level leader. We had seen her participation and heard her voice at protests in Delhi. She and other Left leaders had many cases registered against them. Did we see Rahul Gandhi anywhere then? Did he speak about CAA during Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra?” Vijayan said, adding, “Why this silence? This is not what people expected. We had many such similar experiences in Parliament. People of Kerala ex pected the sound of Kerala to be heard loud in Parliament but it was very feeble because LDF did not have enough numbers.”
People who voted Congress last time were now “feeling remorse”, Vijayan said.
CPI state secretary Binoy Viswam questioned Congress’s political wisdom in fielding Rahul from Wayanad, saying those who sent him there did not have the ability to see “beyond their nose”.
Viswam asked Congress what its focus was in 2024: the Hindi heartland, which sends the highest number of MPs to Lok Sabha, or Kerala, which elects only 20 MPs, all non-BJP. “Also, we would like to ask Congress who their main enemy is — the RSS/BJP or the Left?” Viswam said.
The ground-level election campaign in Wayanad is going to be a full-fledged “gloves-off” campaign between alliance partners.
Congress has hit back against public criticism of Rahul’s candidature, saying CPI had not even put up a convincing fight in the constituency from where he had won with a spectacular margin of 4.3 lakh votes against CPI’s P P Suneer in 2019.
“What was the vote secured by LDF in the constituency? They put up only an insignificant contest. If they were that concerned about the INDIA bloc, they could have supported Rahul to strengthen the broad alliance,” AICC general secretary K C Venugopal said. “After all, the Wayanad fight was not close.”
Venugopal said the INDIA alliance was just a campaign tool for CPM, whose insincerity showed in its absence from Rahul’s Yatra. LDF’s vote share in the constituency in 2019 was 25.2% against Congress’s 64.8%, with BJP only getting 7.2%.
Rahul’s candidature from Wayanad was the defining moment in the 2019 elections in Kerala, helping create an unprecedented consolidation of minority votes in favour of UDF, resulting in a 19/20 sweep. This time also, Congress hopes Rahul’s candidature would have a ripple effect in other constituencies, especially in retaining minority votes.
However, Rahul’s re-contest is unlikely to have the same effect this time, as the buzz then was around having a prospective PM candidate from Kerala. This time, the general feeling is that Congress is not on a strong wicket to form the next govt at Centre. Also, Rahul’s “newness factor” has waned, say experts.
Nevertheless, the constituency, with a minority population of over 50%, remains a UDF bastion, with it winning four of the seven constituencies in the 2021 elections and having a majority of nearly one lakh votes.
While Annie has been campaigning in the constituency for around three weeks now, Rahul is yet to arrive. The Left is also raking up the issue of Rahul’s “absence”.
The fight between the two national-level INDIA leaders has provided ready fodder for BJP. A day after CPI announced Annie’s candidature, PM Narendra Modi, on a visit to Thiruvananthapuram, took a dig at the contest between Congress and Left in Wayanad.
“The Left and Congress accuse each other of corruption… Left parties now want ‘Congress Yuvraj’ to leave Wayanad,” Modi said. “In Kerala, they are each other’s enemies, but outside Kerala, they are BFFs, which means best friends forever.”