Rahul brigade to camp in Red bastion in north Kerala during polls

Thiruvananthapuram: A team of young professionals, NSUI and Youth Congress leaders under Rahul Gandhi are chalking out grand plans for the upcoming Kerala Assembly election scheduled to be held in April.

The Congress high command has already put in place 'Mission 60' - aiming to win 60 seats for the Congress and of these the party wants 15 seats from north Kerala which is a Red bastion with CPM and Left candidates winning from these areas. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and CPM politburo member and former state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan also hail from the region.

Sources in the Congress told IANS that Rahul Gandhi will camp at his constituency Wayanad in north Kerala to lead the poll campaign.

Congress spokesperson Shama Mohammed will contest from Kannur district of north Kerala, a Red bastion and this is considered as part of the strategy of the Rahul brigade.

The state Congress is hoping to increase its tally from north Kerala with the presence of Rahul Gandhi, and sources said that unexpected candidates will be fielded by the party to spring a surprise on the rival camps.

The party is primarily aiming for Kozhikode North, Kozhikode South and Beypore seats. From Kasargod, Kannur, Kozhikode, Malappuram, Wayanad and Palakkad the Congress and its UDF coalition is expecting 35 seats of which the Congress alone wants to get 15 seats. The party strategists are planning to wrest those seats which were earlier represented by the Congress but are now held by the CPM candidates. The Vadakara Lok Sabha seat was a CPM bastion for almost three decades until the present KPCC president Mullappally Ramachandran wrested it.

Uduma in Kasargod, Ponnani in Malappuram, Koyilandi, Nadapuram and Perambra in Kozhikode district are the seats which the Congress expects to wrest from the CPM.

At present, the Congress has 6 MLAs from 60 constituencies in these 6 districts. In the 2016 Assembly polls, UDF garnered 23 seats of which 17 were won by the Indian Union Muslim League while 6 went to the Congress.

With the Congress conducting surveys using the services of a psephology agency aided by a local group, the party is trying to understand the flaw in its strategies and the selection of candidates.

KPCC president Mullappally Ramachandran told IANS: "Congress will repeat the 2019 general election results where we won 19 of the 20 Lok Sabha seats and we are getting feedback and reports on probable candidates. There will be a strong candidate list and we will proceed according to the plans and strategies which we finalise."