Kanjirapally: If there is one constituency in the 2006 assembly polls on which the attention of the entire state is focused, even without any political heavyweight being in the fray, it is Kanjirapally in Kottayam district.
Kanjirapally has been a traditional United Democratic Front (UDF) bastion, but this time round every political equation has been turned on its head thanks to the candidates that the two leading fronts chose to field, and spice has been added with the candidature of an independent.
The candidates are as different as chalk, cheese and charcoal. The UDF has fielded Congressman Joseph Vazhackan, who is not a native of the constituency. The Left Democratic Front decided to back the high-profile bureaucrat Alphons Kannanthanam, who resigned last month as the land revenue commissioner to try his luck in the electoral fray. Kannanthanam is fighting the poll as a Left-backed independent.
And to give both the frontline candidates a real fight, there is an independent Georgekutty Agusthy, a former district president of the Kerala Congress (J), who quit the party as it was denied the Kanjirapally seat in the LDF seat allocation process. All three candidates also have to contend with K.P. Showkath, who polled 17,993 votes in 2001 when the winning margin was roughly 1,500 votes. Showkath is in the fray this time, too.
What makes the contest particularly interesting and absolutely unpredictable is the choice of candidates by the UDF and the LDF.
The sitting Congress MLA, George J. Mathew had been expected to contest again, but in a last-minute decision the party decided to dump Mathew and field Joseph Vazhackan instead. This has enraged the Mathew camp and the LDF hopes that many of the disgruntled Congressmen owing allegiance to the sitting MLA will cast their votes against Vazhackan.
The Left camp faces a similar problem. Some leading figures in the local Communist Party of India Marxist establishment are learnt to be unhappy that Kannanthanam has been given the seat overriding their claim as candidates.
But the real twist to the contest has been given by the candidature of Georgekutty Agusthy, who is also the "son of the soil" among the three leading candidates.
Agusthy was with the Kerala Congress (M), then broke away with the party along with P.C. Thomas to form the Indian Federal Democratic Party, and later when IFDP merged with the Kerala Congress (J), Agusthy landed in the LDF camp.
At the end of all that, when Kerala Congress (J) was denied the Kanjirapally seat, Agusthy decided to quit the party and contest against the official LDF candidate Kannanthanam. So in which camp does he stand now? "In the people's camp," says Agusthy, who is a seasoned politician with experience at the middle rungs of several outfits.
Electioneering for the assembly poll in Kerala, which had got off to a sedate start a fortnight ago, has gathered steam as the campaigning for the first phase of polls in six districts is nearing an end.
Six southern districts in the state Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Kottayam and Idukki will go to the polls on April 22.
