UDF in Kerala taps into settler-farmer grievances to take on LDF ahead of 2025 local body polls
The Hindu
UDF Opposition in Kerala mobilizes settler-farmer community against LDF over wildlife attacks, influencing local body polls in 2025.
The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) Opposition in Kerala is seeking to harness the broader regional and economic forces animating Church-backed settler-farmer politics in Kerala to put the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) on the defensive ahead of the local body polls in 2025.
The passions influencing the low-income and chiefly agrarian rural communities abutting forest lands include public anger against the State government’s alleged failure to prevent recurring wildlife attacks on humans and insulate farmlands from marauding wild animals, chiefly raiding wild elephants and feral boars.
Even as politically bipartisan protests unfolded at Vannapuram panchayat in Idukki district on Monday (December 30, 2024) over the death of a 23-year-old youth, Amar Ilahi, in a wild elephant attack, Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan declared that the UDF would mobilise the settler-farmer community against the government’s alleged failure to insulate human lives and farmlands from wildlife predation.
The UDF and the LDF seemed acutely aware that nearly 50 lakh families, a significant electoral bloc, lived near wildlife habitats, given the State’s almost 30% forest cover, and that their concerns had a crucial bearing on their political prospects in the upcoming local body elections.
Pointedly, Mr. Satheesan noted that as many as 968 people had died in wildlife attacks in Kerala since the LDF came to power in 2016.
In a statement, he alleged that the government’s stated mitigation measures, chiefly solar fencing, trench construction, providing forage and water deep inside wildlife habitats and warning systems in vulnerable localities, have largely remained on paper.
Mr. Satheesan noted that the government’s compensation for crop loss from wildlife raids was often deficient and delayed.
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