A meeting of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) on Tuesday saw a winning chance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and beyond, given the “tectonic shift” in “disenchanted” Left Democratic Front (LDF) votes to the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the Puthuppally Assembly byelection.
The KPCC pegged the erosion of the LDF votes in the constituency at 12,000 and predicted that the trend would reflect positively for the UDF in future elections.
The KPCC felt that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s “disdainful silence” on corruption scandals dogging his office and family, the “shocking tales” of entrenched corruption in the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-controlled cooperative banks and societies, the financial shenanigans of CPI(M) leaders, the party’s “contempt” for the rule of law, and “lack of inner party criticism against the political executive and absence of accountability and course correction” had prompted staunch LDF supporters to take a bleak view of their government. It concluded that the Puthuppally byelection was a strong bellwether of Kerala’s voting behaviour and a credible litmus test of the Pinarayi Vijayan government’s public approval.
