(MENAFN-Khaleej Times) ghosts of murders perpetrated by political parties have come to haunt their candidates in the elections for the lok sabha to be held in kerala on april 10
The communist party of india (marxist), which banked on martyrs to win elections in the past, is troubled most in the current elections. the candidates in several seats are faced with the onerous task of answering unpleasant questions over the acts of their partymen.
The brutal murder of t p chandrashekharan, a rebel marxist leader who questioned the party’s ideological deviations, has put the party candidates not only at vatakara, where the slain leader was based, but also in the nearby constituencies of calicut and kannur on the defensive.
The revolutionary marxist party (rmp), a parallel outfit floated by chandrashekharan, has made the going tough for cpm candidates a n shamseer (vatakara), p k sreemathi (kannur) and v vijayaraghavan (calicut) by fielding strong candidates against them.
The rmp is dominating the campaign by raising the killing of chandrashekharan as the major issue. the congress-led ruling united democratic front (udf), which hopes to gain from the issue, is adding fuel to the campaign by raising other political murders perpetrated by the cpm men.
Who will benefit from the issue is not known since this is the first electoral battle after the brutal killing of chandrashekharan on may 4, 2012. the rmp’s presence in the fray in the 2009 election itself saw cpm nominee p sathidevi losing the battle by 56,186 votes. she had won the seat in 2004 by a whopping majority of 130, 589 votes.
The rmp had also done much damage to the cpm in the subsequent local body polls. these defeats may have prompted the cpm or a section of it to eliminate the rmp leader. the cpm has tried to minimise the damage by terming the murder as a result of personal rivalry between chandrashekharan and ramachandran, one of the convicted party functionaries, and expelling him from the party in the run up to the election.
However, the slain leader’s wife k k rema has dismissed it as a political gimmick that will not help the party in the elections. she says that the people will reject the party claim and use their votes to register their protest against cpm’s fascist culture of political killings. rema believes that this election will prove catastrophic for the cpm and its partners in the left democratic front.
The family members of abdul shukkoor, a muslim students federation worker, mohammed fasal, an activist of national development front and k t jayakrishnan, a yuva morcha leader, who were murdered similarly by cpm men, also feel the same. shukoor’s mother, p c anthika, in fact, wrote to khuthubudeen, whose life was spared by the gujarat rioters, to ask the cpm why they did not show the same mercy the sangh parivar shown to him to his son when he was brought by the cpm to kannur to campaign for the party.
Besides these killings, some murders committed by the cpm workers in central kerala district of idukki decades ago have also come to haunt the party. the buried cases were raked up by the party’s idukki secretary m m mani through a controversial speech, in which he claimed that the party used to eliminate its political opponents according to a hit list prepared by the party.
The recent arrests of two cpm workers and a local committee secretary of the party in connection with the murder of a 40-year-old person on march 2 in trichur district have fueled the campaign against murder politics.
The congress has already added it to its armory by comparing the killing of nawas, son of thaliyapadathu muhammedali, by a masked gang outside his house with the murder of t p chandrashekharan.
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