CPI-M likely to field best team for Kerala polls

Thiruvananthapuram, March 1 : The CPI-M led Pinarayi Vijayan government in Kerala, which is aiming to create history by becoming the first ruling dispensation to retain power in the southern state, appears to have decided to field its best team for the April 6 Assembly elections after being stung by reverses in the form of protests by qualified jobless youth and the deep sea fishing fiasco.
As the first step to fielding its best team of candidates in the likely 90 seats out of the 140 Assembly constituencies in Kerala that it will contest, the party’s top brass is seriously thinking if they need to drop the big names, as planned earlier.
After the whitewash in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the CPI-M’s morale booster came when it was able to hold on to the pole position in the local body polls.
Then there were talks that the party may decide to drop some big names, but following a series of protests, first by the jobless youth, and then over the deep sea fishing fiasco, the CPI-M top brass felt that it has slipped and to cover up that slip, serious discussions have started and the coming days will reveal the composition of the party’s list of candidates.
A person in the know of the developments said that the general norm is that the recommendations of candidates come from the 14 district committees of the party and then the final selection is done at the state committee level.
The CPI-M had earlier decided not to field stalwarts and state ministers like Thomas Issac, G. Sudhakaran, A.K. Balan, Kadakampally Surendran, M.M. Mani and T.P. Ramakrishnan.