The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] attempted to salvage some comfort from the party’s disastrous showing in the Puthuppally Assembly byelection by attributing the emphatic Congress win to an “all-subsuming sympathy wave” for the late Chief Minister Oommen Chandy.
Party State secretary M.V. Govindan said Puthuppally witnessed gut-level emotional voting for the late Congress leader. The sympathy factor that helped the Congress win in Puthuppally byelection would not feed into future elections. “It was a one-time and transient electoral phenomenon with a scarce chance of repeating itself,” Mr. Govindan claimed.
Mr. Govindan said the Congress had previously won byelections only to lose the seats to the Left Democratic Front in subsequent general elections. The bypoll result was no bellwether of Kerala’s voting behaviour ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and beyond. Nor was it a litmus test of the popularity of the Pinarayi Vijayan government.
