UDF to revitalise organisational machinery to turn anti-govt. sentiment into votes in LS polls

UDF coordination committee finds LDF unpopular; UDF needs to bolster booth-level org. to convert anti-incumbency sentiment to votes. UDF sees cooperative sector corruption as powerful motivator; Left votes gravitating to Opposition in byelections. UDF questions predictive power of byelections for Lok Sabha polls. Minorities seen as main battleground; UDF senses trump card in Rahul Gandhi's candidature from Wayanad. UDF casts LS battle in Kerala as contest between Gandhi and Modi.

A meeting of the United Democratic Front (UDF) coordination committee on Friday gauged that the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government remained deeply unpopular as Kerala heads to the next Lok Sabha elections in 2024.

However, some leaders deemed the UDF’s organisational machinery at the booth level needed to be more robust to turn the anti-incumbency sentiment into votes.

The UDF required dedicated volunteers to knock on doors, vet voters’ lists, ensure the inclusion of new voters, collate mobile numbers of electors, identify “double votes”, and determine deceased persons still on the electoral rolls.

For one, the UDF concluded that cooperative sector corruption was a powerful motivator for voters.

The UDF also felt buoyed that traditional Left votes had gravitated considerably to the Opposition in the Puthuppally and Thrikkakara byelections.

However, some UDF leaders reportedly remained vexed about how much stock to put into the byelection results and questioned their predictive power, given the looming Lok Sabha elections where other issues might come into play.

It was not lost on the UDF that the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] had, at least publicly, written the byelection results off as one-off wins fired up by sympathy vote and an insufficient measure of voters’ mood.