Women entry did no favour: Report

Thiruvananthapuram: CPM central committee's election review report concluded that the entry of Kanakadurga and Bindu in Sabarimala temple a day after historic Women’s Wall, was exploited successfully by the opponents.

The review report brought out by the central committee, said the CPM and LDF government took a firm position supporting the Supreme Court verdict allowing the entry of women of in the famous shrine irrespective of their age. To uphold the apex court verdict ensuring gender equality, the party and government could not have taken a different stand.

On the other hand the Congress, RSS and BJP reversed their earlier position of supporting the Supreme Court verdict and organised a virulent campaign against the government. They succeeded in creating confusion and weaning away a section of traditional Left supporters. The CC asked state unit to bring back the believers who were misguided, back to Left fold.

The party expressed serious concern over the increasing vote share of the BJP in the state. “The BJP’s 15 per cent vote share despite transferring votes to UDF, is a matter of serious concern. Kerala unit needs to conduct concerted political, ideological and organisational work to contain BJP,” the report said.

The report also slammed the state unit of CPM for failing to gauge the huge defeat. “Even after the polling, Kerala comrades were hopeful of securing majority seats. But most seats were lost by around 1 lakh votes. Why did the party fail to understand people’s mood?  Its matter of serious concern, appropriate steps needed to rectify the mistakes,” the report said.

While pointing out that the voting pattern in Lok Sabha election has always been different from the Assembly election in Kerala, the party said this time the fear of the BJP and Narendra Modi forming a government at the Centre caused a bigger shift among the secular and democratic minded sections in favour of the UDF. This was more evident particularly among Muslim and Christian minorities.

“The campaign by the UDF to form a secular government at the Centre and to make Congress the single largest party in Parliament facilitated this shift. The decision to field Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad was taken to further enhance this appeal,” the report noted.

Because of the weakening of the CPM and Left front at the national level especially after the defeats in West Bengal and Tripura, the slogan to strengthen the Left presence in Parliament for playing a crucial role in forming an alternative secular government at the Centre, did not carry conviction among the people, it said.

The CC also noted that despite good appreciation among the people about the overall performance of the LDF government, the party failed to transform this into electoral support. This needs to be looked into. The problem areas have to be identified and remedial steps should be taken at the earliest.

The party should seriously examine about why its base is not expanding despite the hard work of the Party and the good performance of the government.