It’s a do-or-die battle for Union minister E Ahmed, the UPA’s sole MP from Kerala.
It’s a do-or-die battle for Union minister E Ahmed, the UPA’s sole MP from Kerala. His party, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), is working overtime to reclaim the party’s monopoly in Malapuram district.
But the CPI(M) has vowed to defeat Ahmed in Malapuram and IUML nominee Mohammed Basheer in Ponnani with the help of its ally, Abdul Nasser Madhani’s People’s Democratic Party.
“The Left has chosen an extremist organisation like the PDP to oppose us. They are saying the Muslim League is spoiling Muslim minds. We have never behaved as a communal party. In fact, Madhani opposed us because we were not virulent like him,” said Ahmed, sweating it out in Malapuram against CPI(M)’s MP TK Hamza.
This Muslim heartland has been a laboratory of sorts for the CPI(M). In the 2004 elections, Hamza, a man with strong religious affinity, wrested Manjeri (Malapuram after the delimitation) from the League. In the 2006 assembly polls, two LDF-backed independents defeated the League’s top men. In 2009, the CPI(M) is in open alliance with the PDP.
In the limelight is Ponnani, a saving grace for the UDF in 2004, when the LDF won 18 of the 20 LS seats. The CPI(M) thinks it can ambush Ponnani successfully this time, with a bit of help from the PDP. The game plan resulted in the candidature of Hussein Randathani, a college principal with considerable clout within the community.
The Indian National League, a breakaway League faction working with the CPI(M), protested, but later went along with the decision.
“This is a fight between secularism and communalism. There was a time when we all supported the League. Then it drifted from its ideals and allied with communal groups,” Randathani said. The Left has based its anti-League campaign around the IUML’s liaison with the National Development Front (reloaded as Popular Front of India), which was partly blamed for communal violence in north Kerala.
Home minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said that there were no cases pending against NDF or PDP. But both fronts accuse each other’s friends of being communalists. A series of leaked police records on the terror recruitment racket in Kerala put Madhani under the scanner. But he denied all charges, including the link with Abdul Sathar, arrested in Hyderabad last year.
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