The pre-poll scene is hotting up but getting ominous as political murders and violence threaten the even pace of what promises to be one of the most closely contested Assembly elections as BJP is engaged in a do-or- die battle to open its electoral account.
The elections are two months away but the spectre of poll violence is in the air. The first in the series was the murder of RSS worker Sujith Kumar in front of his parents at Pappinissery in Kannur on February 15. On March 8, auto driver E K Biju, 39, was waylaid and attacked in front of schoolchildren, all aged below 10 years, at Chokli in Kannur.
Congress worker Sunil Kumar was pulled out of his house in Kayamkulam on Monday and knifed to death. The skirmish at Kattayikonam on Monday night between CPM and BJP workers has been reined in, for now, but the situation remains fluid.
In between, a Congress panchayat president and his female colleague were locked up in a blatant moral policing act in Kozhikode three days ago. In all such violence, workers of CPM, the principal Opposition party, are allegedly involved.
Sources said the attacks, apparently isolated but occurring in three different parts of the State, are of a pattern. Unless the administration and the Election Commission deal sternly with such wanton acts of cruelty, the atmosphere will plunge into total chaos, affecting the exercise of a free and fair franchise.
Perhaps this is what the perpetrators of violence would want: terrorise rivals.
Political parties, who still believe in tit for tat on the streets, forget how much the average Kerala voter abhors violence. The impact of the assassination of the CPM rebel, T P Chandrasekharan, was felt for a long time. One of the main reasons for the CPM loss in the Neyyattinkara by-election has been attributed to the TP killing and the alacrity with which the party sought to defend the assassins.
But the electoral success of Karayi brothers has once again demonstrated that violence pays, though eventually both had to give up their seats in the local councils. The political violence between the hotheads in Kannur may have to do with the social history of North Malabar.
But Kerala has marched far ahead of the days of gore. Perpetrators of such violence used to be valorised and the manifestation of such a mindset is evident in the recurring incidents. But continuing with such a legacy spells doom for its practitioners.
Even national TV channels have picked up the latest bout of violence in poll-bound Kerala. Given the changed power equations at the Centre, every instance of local skirmish would be picked up and catalogued. The CPM which aspires to win the elections has much to lose by not disciplining its cadre on the eve of the polls. The BJP, too, cannot claim to be uninvolved, strategically.
