Battle of ideas

“Royalty and family rule are a thing of the past. Speaking at an LDF election rally in Sulthan Bathery, Yechury was critical of Rahul Gandhi’s choice of Wayanad as a place to contest against the BJP, even as he said that the need of the hour was for “an alternative secular government with the support of the Left”. “Rahul Gandhi has to explain why he is contesting from Wayanad against a Left candidate, when we are both seeking a democratic secular alternative at the Centre that gives importance to people’s problems,” he said. We must all be careful not to fall prey to that attempt.” One of the crucial questions of the Kerala elections is the likely choice of the State’s substantial minority communities when they think of an alternative to the BJP at the Centre given the presence of Rahul Gandhi as a candidate in the State, the wholehearted support offered to him by the Muslim League and the surprising way Modi and BJP president Amit Shah chose to alienate the minorities through the repeated statements they made in their desperate bid to consolidate Hindu votes in their favour over the Sabarimala issue in the few constituencies where they hope to achieve a breakthrough. The latter, though ruling India but still an “outcast” in the State, has finally found in the Sabarimala controversy an issue to propel itself into credible triangular fights in at least a two of the State’s constituencies: Pathanamthitta, the gateway constituency to Sabarimala, and Thiruvananthapuram, where the fight between Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, former CPI Minister C. Divakaran and the BJP’s former Governor of Mizoram Kummanam Rajasekharan has all the makings of a political thriller.