Even before campaigning for the first phase and second phases of the Lok Sabha election, on April 11 and 18, reaches its crescendo, the Congress has drawn flak for its choice of candidates and delay in announcing the list of candidates.
A few of the candidates of the party were forced to file their nomination papers on March 26, the last day for doing so for the second phase, because of the delay in the announcement of their constituencies. Barring a few cases where there was a genuine last-minute problem—such as in Karnataka where the Janata Dal (Secular) returned the Bangalore (North) seat to the Congress for want of a candidate, forcing it to call up a reluctant Krishna Byre Gowda to contest—there appeared no external reason for the Congress to delay the release of the final list of candidates.
In Tamil Nadu, when the first list was announced on March 23, many questioned the rationale behind the allotment of the Theni seat to former Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) president E.V.K.S. Elangovan when former MP J.M. Haroon had managed over a lakh votes there in the last election. E.V.K.S. Elangovan, though a rank outsider in the constituency, is still seen as having a chance because of the possible near-vertical split in the votes of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) between former MLA Thanga Tamilselvan (of T.T.V. Dinakaran’s Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam) and O. Paneerselvam’s son, O.P. Raveendranath.
The candidature of former TNCC president Su. Thirunavakkarasar in Tiruchi has also been questioned by many within and outside the party who believe that Joseph Louis, son of the local Congress heavyweight L. Adaikalraj, would have been a better fit. In Tiruchi, too, the AMMK is expected to garner a significant vote share to see the Congress candidate through.
The candidature of K. Jayakumar in Tiruvallur has also evoked criticism because the man who lost out, former MP P. Viswanathan, is said to have a better base in the district. Soon after the announcement of the Congress candidate for Arni, M.K. Vishnu Prasad, the AIADMK requested its alliance partner the PMK, which had been allotted the seat as part of the seat-sharing process, to let it contest in the seat because the party believed that it had a better chance of victory against Vishnu Prasad. The PMK obliged and was compensated with a seat in Central Tamil Nadu, Dindigul, where it has very little support.
Similarly, there were vocal questions posed by a former MP, Sudarsana Natchiappan, about the choice of the Sivaganga candidate, former Union Minister P. Chidambaram’s son, Karti P. Chidambaram. Given the fact that Karti has been under the Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate radar for his investments abroad, some in the party feel that there could have been a less-controversial candidate.
Karti himself asserted that the whole investigation was a witch-hunt and that he would come out of it unscathed. Karti’s biggest advantage is his opponent, BJP national secretary H. Raja. Raja has a record of having belittled the jallikattu movement of 2017, the courts and the police. He is also seen as the symbol of the politics of polarisation in Tamil Nadu. He had tried to invoke actor Vijay’s religion by emphasising his full name; asked the Communist Party of India veteran D. Raja to shoot his daughter, a student of JNU; and spoken derogatorily of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, the ideologue of the Dravidian movement. Even the vast resources of the BJP might not be enough to help him in this election.
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