Thiruvananthapuram, June 4 Congress' Kerala unit President K. Sudhakaran, who retained his Kannur Lok Sabha seat, on Tuesday demanded that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan should step down, as the CPI-M-led LDF, after claiming a big victory, managed to win just one seat.
"The verdict which saw us (Congress-led UDF) winning 18 seats, and the CPI-M unable to go beyond the one seat they had in 2019 clearly shows that there is a huge anti-Vijayan wave. Hence he should step down," he demanded.
However, CPI-M state Secretary M.V. Govindan said the Lok Sabha election result need not be seen as a setback for our state government.
"... we respect the verdict. We won only one seat in 2019 also and we did well at the 2020 Local bodies’ poll and we retained office in the 2021 Assembly polls. So we will definitely look at what happened," he said.
The biggest surprises in the state were the victory of BJP candidate Suresh Gopi in Thrissur by around 72,000 votes, leading to the BJP opening its account in the state for the first time and how Union Minister Rajiv Chandrasekhar put up a strong fight against Congress' Shashi Tharoor in Thiruvananthapuram, by over 16,000 votes.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Gopi had come third, but this time, he won a massive victory not just for him, but also for his BJP, which does not even have a legislator in the 140-member state Assembly.
Another stiff triangular battle was seen in Attingal when Union Minister V. Muraleedharan finished a very close third and gave anxious moments to sitting Congress MP Adoor Prakash, who won in a photo finish by defeating CPI-M legislator V. Joy by 1,708 votes.
State BJP President K. Surendran, who finished a poor third at Wayanad where sitting Congress MP Rahul Gandhi romped home but saw his victory margin dip to 3.64 lakh votes from 4.30 lakh votes in 2019, said that the BJP has come out with flying colours. "We were sure we would open our account and we did it. We are on a sound footing as our vote share also has gone up from 15 per cent to almost 20 per cent," he said.
The CPI-M managed to win just one seat at Alathur, as state SC/ST Minister K.Radhakrishnan defeated sitting Congress MP Ramya Haridas by around 20,000 votes, while in other seats, several party veterans like K.K Shailaja, Thomas Isaac, A Vijayaraghavan, Elamaram Kareem, C. Raveendranath and M.V. Jayarajan biting the dust. The CPI-M's only sitting MP, A.M. Ariff from Alappuzha was pushed to second place by Congress General Secretary K.C. Venugopal, a two-time MP from the seat.
Now all eyes are on the CPI-M party meetings as it remains to be seen if there is going to be any resentment against Vijayan who has come under huge attack from the opposition against the controversies surrounding his daughter Veena‘s IT firm Exalogic and his style of functioning.
CPI-M Politburo member M.A. Baby said: "There is going to be a threadbare analysis at our party, in the Left Democratic Front and in the state government on why this happened."
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