Kerala poll row: Claims of Church, Muslim leaders influencing candidate selection
A shocking disclosure has been made by Kerala’s leading political chronicler and journalist, P Sujathan, and this has to be taken seriously by the Election Commission of India as well as the Union Home Ministry.
The CPI(M) and the Congress candidates for the 9th April Assembly election have been handpicked by the Latin Catholic Church and Islamic extremist organizations. The Marxists and the Congress may be fighting each other for power in the state, but the number of seats and the candidates from these communities to be fielded by these parties were decided by the Archdiocese of Verapoly, Muslim League supremo Panakkad Sayyid Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal, and Kanthapuram A P Abubakr Musaliyar, addressed as the Grand Mufti of India.
Though the Marxists and Congress swear by secularism, the candidates to be fielded by these parties should get prior approval from the heads of the Latin Catholic Church, the Muslim League, and the All India Sunni Jamiyyathul Ulama.
“A cursory look at the list of candidates released by these parties are enough to prove the roles of Church and Ulama in the selection of candidates. All the Christian and Muslim candidates have been whetted by the bishops and maulavis,” said Sujathan. It may be noted that Leader of Opposition V D Satheesan (Congress) had called on the bishops and priests of the Catholic Church in the run-up to the selection of party candidates.[1]
The Congress was forced to dump Deepthi Mary Varghese in favor of Mohammed Shiyas as a candidate from the Kochi Assembly Constituency at the instance of Sadiq Ali Thangal. A political greenhorn hailing from the Latin Catholic Church has been fielded at Ernakulam following the intervention of the Bishop of Verapoly Archdiocese. Deepthi, who won in the Ernakulam Municipal Corporation election, was expected to be anointed as the mayor, but that move too was torpedoed by the bishops of the Latin Catholic Church. Though she is a Christian, Deepthi was dumped because she hailed from another sect of the Abrahamic religion and had married a Hindu.
Leaders of the CPI(M) and the Congress were seen running helter-skelter in their bid to appease the spiritual leaders belonging to the minority communities. The Church itself has at least a dozen factions, namely Roman Catholic, Latin Catholic, Mar Thoma, Orthodox, and Jacobites, which constitute a major vote bank. The Hindus are the only community that has no bargaining power in Kerala politics, and the influential positions are all under the direct control of the Christians and Islamists.
Prof. K S Radhakrishnan, former vice chancellor of Sree Sankara Sanskrit University, Kalady, is of the view that this kind of candidate selection is a prelude to a political and social disaster that is waiting to happen any time. Though the Indian National Congress is fully under the control of Christians and Muslims, the Hindus are afraid to speak out about the ground realities.
Vellappally Natesan, general secretary, Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, a social and educational outfit of the powerful Ezhava community, has been labelled as a communalist for pointing out the discrepancies in the allocation of educational institutions to various communities and castes. “While the Christians and Muslims have walked away with licenses of all aided schools and colleges, it is shocking to note that the Ezhava community, with vast experience in managing big educational institutions, was not allocated even a single school,” Natesan had complained from all available platforms. His ire was directed against the Muslim League, which had monopolized the department of education whenever the Congress was in power in the State.
Despite his explanation that he was not targeting the Muslim community as a whole but the Muslim League, which had usurped the department of education, the extremist elements among the Muslims were quick to brand him as a religious zealot. The decision of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by Abdul Naser Mahdani, an accused in the 1996 Coimbatore serial blast case, which claimed more than 70 lives, to extend support to the CPI(M) led Left Democratic Front has brought a kind of parity between the two fronts. In their bid to establish that one is more secular than the other, both fronts are playing one-upmanship by courting the Islamic extremists.
The SDPI, the political arm of the banned Popular Front of India, has managed to get five of its candidates as Congress nominees in the election, according to an investigation by Team India Live led by Vadayar Sunil. Though there were discreet alliances between the Islamic extremists and the Congress and the CPI(M) in the past, this time they have thrown all inhibitions to the wind.
There are many deals between the CPI(M) and the Congress to ensure that the BJP does not win anywhere in the state. The secret pact between the two parties at Manjeswaram, where K Surendran of the BJP is expected to win, is proof of such a deal. The CPI(M) has fielded K R Jayananda, a person who does not speak Malayalam and who has never been heard of till now, as its candidate. “This is to facilitate the sitting MLA AKM Ashraf of the Muslim League to sail through the polls,” said Sujathan. Ashraf had won the 2021 poll against Surendran by a thin majority of 745 votes!
Satheesan, Leader of the Opposition, claims that the UDF is sure to win more than 100 seats out of the 141 constituencies at stake. Though the CPI(M) is plagued by internal issues and the UDF looked invincible at the beginning of the poll campaign, much water has flown through River Periyar over the last few weeks, and the UDF is struggling to stay afloat as this is being written.
The saying goes that in politics, a day is a long time, and a lot can happen.
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
Reference:
[1] Opposition leader V D Satheesan makes discreet visit to Syro-Malabar Church HQ – Jan 09, 2026, ToI
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