End of an Era: Congress Routs Vijayan’s Left Front in Kerala

In what can only be described as a political temblor, outgoing Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan suffered a sharp personal setback. Contesting from his home turf of Dharmadam in Kannur, a Marxist bastion, Vijayan scraped through with a far slimmer margin (12,703) than expected against a relatively young Congress challenger, VP Abdul Rasheed, even as the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) swept to power, decisively unseating the Left Democratic Front (LDF) after a decade, riding on a consolidation of minority votes and a strong undercurrent of anti-incumbency. Vijayan has won with a margin of more than 50,000 votes in 2021.

For the Congress, this victory is more than electoral arithmetic. In fact, it is organisational oxygen because after ten years in the wilderness, the win comes just in time to keep a restless coalition together. The spotlight now shifts to who would be the next chief minister. The chances are VD Satheesan, who led the campaign for the Congress, will be chosen as the next CM. However, there are other claimants too.

 The LDF, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, had gone into the election projecting Vijayan as the face of continuity and development, hoping to replicate the unusual 2021 electoral feat when it broke Kerala’s long-standing pattern of alternating governments. This time, the pitch was unmistakably presidential as Open had reported earlier: over 2,000 hoardings of the 81-year-old leader dotted highways across the state, but the gamble didn’t click.

Not only did the campaign fail to deliver, it appears to have backfired. Vijayan’s reduced margin, has come to symbolise a broader erosion for his party. The Left’s attempt to widen its Hindu support base by appearing accommodative of certain controversial community figures seems to have triggered a counter-consolidation among Muslim voters alongside the Congress’ traditional advantage with sections of the Christian community. The result was less a contest and more a wave, one that even surpassed the expectations of exit polls and seasoned pundits.

Several factors converged to produce this outcome. Anti-incumbency ran deeper than anticipated, compounded by a growing perception of insularity around the Chief Minister, a leadership style seen as reliant on a close inner circle dominated by people like P Sasi and others -- and inattentive to dissent. Allegations of nepotism, including the elevation of his son-in-law Muhammed Riyas and charges of corruption dented the government’s image. CPM’s reading of fringe political formations such as SDPI and their influence also appears to have faltered while unease within its cadre base became increasingly visible.

Nowhere was this internal churn more evident than in Kannur itself. The district where the undivided communist party was first officially formed in the state witnessed high-profile rebellions in its key turfs. Dissidents, including former strongmen, crossed over or contested independently, defeating official party candidates.

Revolt against the state leadership of CPM is a key reason for loss in at least two of the party’s bastions in Kannur. Two dissidents from Kannur and one from Alappuzha, former stalwart G Sudhakaran, entered the poll fray and defeated CPM candidates. In the run-up to the polls, a CPM leader had told Open, “Vijayan has been an undisputed leader within CPM in the sense that within party forums very few people question his decisions and choices, especially in the past one decade of him being chief minister … the exit of several party leaders, especially G Sudhakaran in Alappuzha, who decided to contest against the party by aligning with UDF, shows that something is brewing within the Stalinist confines of CPM.”

In Ambalappuzha from where Sudhakaran contested, he defeated the CPM candidate handsomely while in Payyannur, CPM rebel V Kunhikrishnan who contested polls as an independent trounced TI Madhusoodanan of CPM who had won the seat in 2021 with a margin of close to 50,000 votes. In Taliparamba, former CPM veteran TK Govindan, now aligned with UDF, defeated PK Shyamala of CPM. Shyamala’s candidature had generated a huge controversy over nepotism; she is wife of CPM state chief MV Govindan. It was over her candidature that TK Govindan quit the party and contested polls from the rival camp. Again, several LDF ministers who were in the fray lost to UDF candidates with very few, like KN Balagopal and Muhammed Riyas, managing to win their seats.

Within sections of the Left, there is also a candid recognition of strategic missteps. The outreach to figures perceived as Islamophobic alienated sections of the minority electorate, while the party’s aggressive positioning against certain Muslim organisations was increasingly read not as ideological contestation but as hostility. Combined with allegations — however unproven — of a tacit understanding with the BJP on select policy issues, this fed into a narrative that unsettled Kerala’s self-consciously secular political culture.

As with charges of earning the wrath of Muslim voters, Sudhir Devadas, a former research head at the Mathrubhumi Group, tells Open, “We all know whom to thank [for minority consolidation], and the person who politically acquiesced in this anti-Muslim vitriol, which the targeted community saw as anti-Islam. This alienated and repulsed progressive minds in our left-of-centre society, which has never held this level of gratuitous malice against a fraternal minority, that too from the head of an organisation associated with the still revered Guru.” He was referring to Chief Minister Vijayan’s perceived proximity to Vellappalli Natesan, former chief of Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Sangham (SNDP) named after the great Kerala reformer Sree Narayana Guru. 

Devadas adds, “Even the high-decibel anti-jamaat crusade (by CPM) was perceived over time by the community as evidence of Islamophobia, compounded by allegations of a tacit CPM-BJP understanding at the very highest echelons, especially in the case of blowing hot and cold over the implementation of the PM Shri scheme. This was further exacerbated by the party surrendering over the obstinacy of certain interested individuals to the strident stance of the junior partner in the coalition, CPI. This was also taken as a humiliation by the cadre, a sentiment shared by a secular electorate, whose antennae are very alert to any dilution of this core political ideal.”

Devadas believes that the fall of this Left dispensation in Kerala was foretold in a significant electoral sign primarily from Malappuram in the local bodies polls of 2025 when UDF swept an unprecedented 11 of the 12 municipalities, 84 of the 94 grama panchayats, 14 of the 15 block panchayats, and 31 of the 33 district panchayat councils. This is attributed to an overwhelming consolidation of the minority vote, as the community stood aghast at how “the self-proclaimed defender of the minority faith” stood complicit when a barrage of venom was spewed by the leader of a similarly traditionally disadvantaged section of society – the Ezhavas, he says.

Meanwhile, speaking to Open, CPM central committee member and leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha, John Brittas, said, “We accept the verdict of the people. There are multiple reasons for our defeat and we will analyse thoroughly in the coming days. This time, a clear trend of minority communities consolidating behind UDF was very evident. While the performance of the government has been widely lauded, voter fatigue, a recurring factor in Kerala politics, has played a significant role in this election.”