A “Communist-free India” has, for the second, grow to be a actuality. For the first time in almost 5 many years, communist events are out of workplace in each State in India. That this has occurred in the centenary yr of the CPI lends it unmistakable historic gravitas. Equally hanging is the symbolism: Kerala, the first State to elect a communist authorities almost seven many years in the past, has now grow to be the final to decrease the pink flag. Paradoxically, this decisive setback for a motion born in Pinarayi village in 1939 has come greater than eight many years later, below the watch of its most well-known son, Pinarayi Vijayan.
For the Left Democratic Motion (LDF), the verdict marks its worst-ever defeat: with the coalition lowered to simply 35 seats in a 140-member Meeting, even under its earlier nadir of 40 seats in the 2001 Meeting election. What makes the rout starker is the collapse in the LDF’s conventional northern bastions. In 2001, the three Malabar districts had largely held agency, delivering 16 of 28 seats to the Left. This time, even that firewall crumbled.
The size of this debacle is accentuated by the indisputable fact that it follows the LDF’s unprecedented consecutive victory in 2021 below Vijayan, when it bagged 99 seats. The LDF’s vote share has dipped under 40 per cent for the first time in 4 many years. The ultimate vote share information verify a decisive shift, with 46.36 per cent for the United Democratic Entrance (UDF), 37.54 per cent for the LDF, and 14.13 per cent for the Nationwide Democratic Alliance (NDA)—a close to inversion of the 2021 numbers.
Conversely, that is the UDF’s most emphatic victory and amongst its greatest in Kerala’s electoral historical past. With 102 seats, it surpasses its earlier excessive of 99 in 2001 and approaches the scale of the Congress–CPI alliance’s landslide of 1977 post-Emergency. The Congress alone, with 63 seats, has delivered certainly one of its strongest performances.
The UDF’s second pillar, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), as soon as once more demonstrated its electoral solidity, successful 22 of the 26 seats it contested. Its normal secretary, P.Okay. Kunhalikutty, set a brand new State document with an 85,327-vote margin in Malappuram. The social gathering additionally registered a symbolic breakthrough with the victory of Fathima Thahlia (35), its first lady MLA, who defeated LDF convenor T.P. Ramakrishnan in Perambra, a long-standing Left stronghold.
In the meantime, even seasoned observers had been unprepared for Vijayan’s private vulnerability. As counting progressed on a sweltering Might afternoon in Dharmadam, certainly one of the CPI(M)’s most impregnable citadels, the Chief Minister briefly trailed a comparatively unknown Youth Congress candidate. Though Vijayan finally gained, his margin shrank dramatically from over 50,000 in 2021 to below 20,000.
Throughout the State, a number of CPI(M) leaders fell in constituencies that they had held for many years. 13 Ministers had been defeated, as had been distinguished leaders such as Okay.Okay. Shailaja, as soon as celebrated broadly as the “Corona-slayer” for her pandemic administration and broadly regarded as a possible successor to Vijayan.
The broader political context is essential. Kerala had remained the final vital electoral bastion of the Left in India over the previous 20 years. One cause was the rise of the BJP, which has disrupted the State’s bipolar contest since the mid-2000s and cut up the anti-Left vote. Initially, this fragmentation labored to the LDF’s benefit. Priveleged-caste voters drifted in direction of the BJP, however in recent times, segments of the CPI(M)’s personal base, particularly amongst the Ezhava OBC neighborhood, have additionally proven indicators of shifting in direction of Hindutva politics. The CPI(M)’s makes an attempt to counter this by means of non secular outreach and tactical alignments seem to have alienated minorities even as the social gathering did not consolidate Hindu help totally. The present vote patterns are prone to verify this churn.
The NDA, although nonetheless a distant third, has achieved a breakthrough of its personal by successful three seats, its best-ever efficiency in the State. The BJP reclaimed Nemom by means of Rajeev Chandrasekhar, its new State chief and politician-entrepreneur, and added Kazhakkoottam and Chathannur. Nonetheless, the continued slide in the saffron vote share from the almost 20 per cent mark it achieved in the 2024 Lok Sabha election needs to be a trigger for concern.
What explains this sweeping UDF victory? It could be reductive to attribute it solely to minority consolidation. The proof suggests a broader cross-sectional verdict: an unmistakable wave of anti-incumbency sentiment, notably towards the CPI(M). Whereas it’s simplistic to scale back such outcomes to particular person management, political processes typically crystallise round a determine. On this case, Vijayan has come to embody each the achievements and the failures of the regime. “Autumn of the Patriarch”, screamed a newspaper following the debacle.
To Vijayan’s credit score, the LDF governments navigated unprecedented crises—from pure disasters to a hostile Centre—whereas strengthening public schooling, healthcare, and welfare programs. In contrast to the Left Entrance below Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in West Bengal, Kerala’s Left didn’t rely solely on neoliberal coverage shifts. Furthermore, allegations of large-scale corruption remained comparatively muted.
But, widespread notion will not be pushed by improvement metrics alone. Political tradition issues in a democracy. The administration’s conceitedness, its intolerance of dissent, and a coercive police drive eroded its credibility. Vijayan’s personal public remarks—typically brusque and dismissive—got here to symbolise this disconnect.
BJP candidates V. Muraleedharan, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and B.B. Gopakumar
have fun at the social gathering headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram, on Might 5.
| Photograph Credit score:
PTI
Does this sign a Bengal-like collapse of the Left? Not essentially. Kerala’s social and political cloth is distinct. Nonetheless, the chance of sharper communal polarisation—minorities consolidating behind the Congress and sections of Hindus gravitating in direction of the BJP—can’t be dismissed in the future, as is obvious in Bengal, the place the Trinamool Congress and the BJP maintain on to the two non secular poles.
For the CPI(M), revival hinges on structural correction. Foremost is the restoration of inner democracy, which has visibly weakened below Vijayan, who commanded the social gathering as its iron-fisted State secretary for a document 17 years earlier than serving as Chief Minister for the subsequent 10 years. No political motion can endure with out house for dissent. The position performed by dissidents—and even sections of conventional Left voters—on this defeat suggests a aware inner correction by the help base itself.
Vijayan’s stature as the defender of the final Left bastion gave him unrivalled authority inside the social gathering, together with in the Polit Bureau. However such centralisation typically hollows out establishments. Historical past gives sufficient cautionary tales about “supreme leaders”. The CPI(M), as soon as identified for its collective management, now faces a vacuum created by extended over-centralisation. Addressing this requires not beauty changes however a generational shift. At 81, and with evident well being considerations, Vijayan’s continued centrality displays the social gathering’s deeper management disaster: the “there isn’t any various” (TINA) syndrome that has grow to be its largest obstacle.
Nonetheless, Vijayan leaves behind a posh and layered legacy. He’s excess of the unsmiling “darkish lord” or the megalomaniac who, in keeping with his critics—they’re legion—led to the destruction of his personal motion. Such caricatures flatten a much more complicated political determine. His tenure embodied each the prospects and the limits of a centralised management inside a cadre-based social gathering.
He was not solely Kerala’s longest-serving Chief Minister but in addition the solely communist chief in the State to safe two consecutive phrases in workplace. Like Bhattacharjee, he shall be remembered for decisively pushing the State in direction of a development mannequin more and more pushed by non-public capital.
The current debacle additionally invitations comparability between the trajectories of the two comrades. Each tried to reconcile Left politics with market realities, and each, in several methods, paid its political prices. Each fought a viscerally hostile media.
At a extra private stage, Vijayan’s journey mirrors that of V.S. Achuthanandan earlier than him. Born right into a toddy-tapper household from a backward Thiyya caste, Vijayan rose from situations of financial and social marginality and bodily violence to occupy the highest workplace in a motion that claimed to symbolize exactly such lessons, however which, for lengthy stretches, was led by these from comparatively privileged social backgrounds. This upward trajectory—each symbolic and actual—stays certainly one of the enduring markers of Vijayan’s political life, even as the contradictions of his tenure proceed to ask scrutiny.
The UDF sweep
The fast future, nonetheless, belongs to the UDF—and the query of management. Regardless of pre-result factionalism inside the Congress, the scale of the victory strengthens Vadassery Damodaran Satheesan’s declare over his two older contenders: Okay.C. Venugopal, the All India Congress Committee normal secretary and Rahul Gandhi’s trusted confidant, and Ramesh Chennithala, the former Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) chief.
Congress leaders Shashi Tharoor, Ramesh Chennithala, Sunny Joseph, Okay.C.
Venugopal and V.D. Satheesan have fun the UDF’s victory at Indira Bhavan in
Thiruvananthapuram on Might 4.
| Photograph Credit score:
NIRMAL HARINDRAN
A six-time legislator and former advocate from Ernakulam, Satheesan (62), led the opposition’s marketing campaign with constant aggression and readability. His pre-election assertion—that he would retire from politics if the UDF did not cross 100 seats—was dismissed as overreach by even UDF leaders till it turned prophetic.
As the KPCC turns a generational web page after the passing or retirement of its previous titans, Satheesan is more and more seen as their pure legatee, regardless of by no means having held ministerial workplace. He combines, in various measure, the political tact of Okay. Karunakaran and Oommen Chandy with the idealism of A.Okay. Antony.
Satheesan has proven a eager strategic sense, most notably in securing the essential backing of the Muslim League in his onward journey in direction of the Chief Minister’s chair. His popularity as a person of rules was bolstered when he took an unambiguous stand towards sexual misconduct inside the social gathering, refusing to kowtow to entrenched caste or communal pursuits.
In contrast to a lot of his contemporaries in the Congress, Satheesan additionally stands out for his mental inclinations: he’s broadly regarded as a voracious reader, a trait that subtly shapes each his politics and public persona.
This emphatic mandate provides each Satheesan and the Congress uncommon leverage, not solely over inner rivals but in addition in managing allies and resisting pressures from entrenched caste and communal lobbies. Whether or not that house shall be used for governance reform or squandered in acquainted factional contests will form Kerala’s subsequent political cycle.
M.G. Radhakrishnan, a senior journalist primarily based in Thiruvananthapuram, has labored with varied print and digital media organisations.
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