Kerala CPI-M gives clean chit to CM Vijayan, says will reach out in people

Thiruvananthapuram: After its five-day leadership meeting to take stock of the mauling it received at the Lok Sabha polls, the CPI-M's Kerala unit on Thursday said that it has decided it would go back to the people, but ruled out the defeat being due to the style of functioning of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

Like in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the CPI-M-led Left managed to get just one seat, while the Congress-led UDF won 18 seats and the BJP won its first-ever seat in the state.

State CPI-M Secretary M.V. Govindan said even while party leaders felt there were things which were against the Left, they did not expect such a reversal and admitted that they failed to gauge the feelings of the people.

“ At our stock-taking meeting, we have identified a few reasons as to why we suffered a setback. Since the Lok Sabha poll is to elect a new Central government, it is natural that people would have thought since the Congress is far better placed than us, they voted for the Congress."

"However, in our detailed analysis, we have found out there are issues. During the Lok Sabha polls, the various Muslim parties rallied together and voted for the Congress. Then another change this time is that casteist forces came into play. In the Hindu Ezhava community, which was always our strong base, there was an aberration. A section led by Tushar Vellapally, who heads the BDJS (the second-biggest party of the BJP-led NDA), took away sizeable votes. Along with this, the Christian community's votes got leaked to the BJP as we even saw some bishops taking part in BJP functions. So all of these contributed to our poor performance," Govindan added.

He also contended that there were issues in disbursing the social welfare pensions "due to the strangulation of finance by the Centre, who got the support of the Congress-led UDF MPs from here".

"Now we have decided to go to the people. We will hear what they have to say and we will also tell them what we have to say. The right-wing media is strongly against us and they were weaving out baseless stories against Vijayan and his family. We are sure we will be able to convince the people and get them back. All our national leaders will be coming and will attend four regional meetings (from July 2 to 4)... there will be a meeting with the people at the grassroots also," Govindan said.

To a question if Vijayan’s style of functioning was a point that was discussed, Govindan shot back: "Which style of Vijayan has to be changed? Look at the 2019 polls also, we suffered a similar defeat and what happened... we won the 2020 local bodies poll and at the 2021 Assembly polls, we created a record by retaining power - such a thing has never happened before, but our tally also went up. It was Vijayan who led us. Style is not built overnight."