Congress in Kerala projects Sabarimala women entry issue as key poll plank

@the_news_21

Thiruvananthapuram: Fearing that the ruling LDF under CPI (M) strongman Pinarayi Vijayan may buck the trend of Kerala alternating between the two main fronts in every five year, in a last-ditch effort the Congress has hit upon the Sabarimala women entry issue as the key campaign theme, promising a legislation to stall entry of women of 10-50 age to the Lord Ayyappa shrine, if voted to power in the state assembly polls which are just round the corner.

The move, which can polarise large sections of electorate, has pushed the LDF into  a bind as the coalition has been planning to go silent on the vexed issue, quietly pushing under the carpet its doctrinaire positions that would have supported throwing open the hill shrine for women of all ages. 

The BJP, still lagging as a distant third in the state but struggling to make a breakthrough, is also constrained by the Congress move to deny the saffron party the monopoly over the temple issue.

Taking the left, right and the centre by surprise, senior Congress legislator and former minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan on Saturday flashed the UDF trump card releasing draft legislation on Sabarimala, to be enacted by the coalition if it gets the mandate to rule the state. It promises legal safeguard for temple rituals and traditions, including bar on women of menstrual age. It holds violation of traditions as a criminal offence that would attract imprisonment of up to two years.

The move to place Sabarimala issue on the forestage is the result of the realization that it is vital for the party’s survival in the state to arrest the steady shift of a sizable section of the Hindus to the BJP. The civic poll results clearly demonstrated this trend as the UDF ended up in third slot in many local bodies, especially in urban areas including the state capital.

The party strategists believe that it is crucial to shore up further erosion of the support base. They hope that by this cleverly-crafted move they could convince this section of people, who are otherwise anti-LDF, that voting for the BJP would indirectly help the LDF to retain power.

The rout of the LDF in 2019 Lok Sabha polls in Kerala was largely attributed to the LDF’s open support to the 2018 Supreme Court judgement that allowed the entry of women of all ages to the Lord Ayyappa shrine, reversing the long tradition. The ruling coalition, however, has regained much of the lost ground since then by snatching  a string of assembly by-polls and emerging the clear winner in the local body polls held a couple of months back. 

In the civic polls, the LDF has cashed in on the severe organizational weakness of the Congress and the welfare sops and freebies rolled out by the LDF government that came as a big relief to masses during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The poor performance at the grass roots forced the Congress high command to intervene in the affairs of the state, and rushed AICC general secretary Tariq Anwar and a couple of other central functionaries to  diagnose and prescribe steps needed to revitalise the party before the assembly polls. After extensive interactions with party office-bearers and workers across the spectrum, they came to the conclusion that the party would be heading to defeat if it goes to polls as a deeply divided house under the leadership of Opposition Leader Ramesh Chennithala and KPCC president Mullapally Ramachandran. 

Seizing on gleanings from a cross section of party workers, former chief minister Oommen Chandy, one of the few mass leaders of Congress in the state, has been made the leader of the poll campaign. The development, however, has kept open the question who would be the chief minister in the event of a win.

Broad hints that the UDF would seize on Sabarimala as a key theme had already been dropped by Chennithala, who is now heading a low-octane roadshow across the state, apparently to consolidate his claim to be the future chief minister. But a formal announcement of the plan by a senior leader came as a surprise to even those in the party.

The party tacticians think that this would compel the CPI (M) to make its position clear on this issue.  Amid the political turbulence triggered by the apex court verdict in 2018, the CPI (M) had launched a campaign to mobilize support for its pro-reform position on the vexed issue. However, after the drubbing in the Lok Sabha polls the party had made a complete retreat, under the pretext of concentrating on larger developmental issues of the state. The current thinking in the party is that it is prudent to steer clear of issues with polarizing potential.

Predictably, both the   CPI (M) and the BJP had dumped the Congress move as an election stunt, as the issue is under consideration of a nine-judge bench of the apex court, set up to examine the larger questions of faith and traditions against the  constitutional guarantees. However, as the state moves further on the road to polls, both the parties would be compelled to spell out their positions with greater clarity. The armchair revolutionaries at the central party would, however, find it a bit hard to justify the reversal of the stand by the state unit.