In the battle for the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, the only strategy left for the rivals to explore was to try as much as possible to discredit Rahul Gandhi, the MP who left Wayanad for Raebareli. Both the CPI and the BJP tried but fell miserably short.
The result felt like destruction. Although the voting percentage dropped by 8 percentage points, Priyanka still managed to achieve a larger margin of victory than her brother. If Rahul Gandhi’s victory margin was 3.64 lakh in early 2024, his sister’s was 4.10 lakh.
She also reclaimed for the Congress the vote share that Rahul Gandhi had garnered in 2019, the first time he contested in Wayanad. Then Rahul’s vote share was 64.94 percent. Now, with 64.99 percent, Priyanka has restored it to Congress.
For her contenders, her brother Rahul was her proxy. They had a litany of woes against Rahul Gandhi, a list good enough to deter any candidate, no matter how formidable she might seem.
Firstly, Rahul Gandhi did not take the human-animal conflict in Wayanad seriously. Secondly, Rahul failed to convince the Karnataka Congress Chief Minister to take a favorable stand on the night travel ban along the Kozhikode-Kollegal NH that passes through Wayanad. Third, Rahul failed to bring the Nilambur-Nanjangud railway line to the attention of the Railway Board.
Fourth, Rahul left Wayanad during the worst crisis (Rahul had already resigned his Wayanad seat when the Chooralmala-Mundakkai tragedy happened). Fifth, Rahul refused to raise even a little finger when the Center denied financial assistance to landslide victims.
CPI’s Sathyan Mokeri, hoping to stoke voters’ outrage, even hinted that Rahul did not have the heart to fight Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said Rahul should have raised the Wayanad issue with the Prime Minister. “If the Prime Minister had still refused, Rahul should have gathered all the MPs of Kerala and held a dharna in front of the Prime Minister’s office. He should have stayed put until the money was paid,” Mokeri had said.
Sixth, Rahul was also accused of not speaking a word for the farmers in Parliament. There were many more embarrassing allegations, such as that Rahul Gandhi did not have even 50 percent presence in Parliament. But none of these convinced the Wayanad electorate. Priyanka Gandhi did not bother to respond to these allegations. However, she convincingly articulated why her brother Rahul left Wayanad for Raebareli.
In her speeches, Priyanka disarmed her voters by collectively describing them as her brother’s savior. “Many people turned their backs on him. Some of his closest colleagues left him. And it was at this time, the most difficult period in his life, that he turned to you for support and encouragement,” she said. She credited Wayanad voters for all her brother’s achievements, including Bharat Jodo Yatra. It worked if the massive majority was any indication.
The CPI, without much help from the CPM, was not a formidable force in Wayanad. In 2014, when Sathyan Mokeri gave Congress MI Shanavas a huge scare, the CPM was fully behind him. Not this time. CPI insiders told Onmanorama that the CPM office in Kalpetta, in the heart of the constituency, had remained closed throughout the campaign.
Priyanka Gandhi with CPI’s Sathyan Mokeri. Photo: Manorama.
The discouraging performance of the CPI will inevitably widen the gap between the party and the CPM. It was an open secret that the CPM was only a token presence at Mokeri’s campaign rallies.
CPM sources had told Onmanorama that the party was not willing to spare its resources for a doomed struggle. Moreover, after the CPI’s “self-righteous” stand on the ADGP issue, the CPM was not so keen to come to its partner’s rescue. Moreover, Priyanka’s presence had denuded the fight of any political significance.
However, the BJP could take some courage. Though the party’s resources were concentrated in Palakkad, its young candidate, Navya Haridas, managed to poll over 1 lakh votes, the only BJP candidate other than K Surendran to do so in Wayanad.
In the first half of 2024, when Surendran contested, he had the entire BJP apparatus behind him. Navya was largely left to fend for herself. If Mokeri focused his energy solely on Priyanka, Navya took on both the Gandhi family and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Her strategy was to finish second, but in the end she lost to Mokeri, the runner-up, by more than one lakh votes.
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