Thiruvananthapuram:The Kerala High Court has invalidated the results of the Devikulam constituency assembly election in Idukki district, citing that the Left Democratic Front (LDF) MLA A Raja, who won by over 7,000 votes, is a member of the Christian community and is not eligible to contest for a seat reserved for the Schedule Caste. The court's decision was made in response to a plea submitted by the United Democratic Front (UDF) candidate for the constituency, D Kumar, who claimed that Raja submitted fake certificates to become eligible for a seat reserved for Scheduled Castes.
The 2021 Assembly election in the Devikulam constituency was contested by CPM leader A Raja, who won by a margin of over 7,000 votes. Devikulam is a seat reserved for candidates belonging to the Scheduled Caste community, making the election results null and void since Raja is allegedly not a Scheduled Caste candidate. The UDF candidate, D. Kumar, who lost to Raja by 7,848 votes in the election, claimed that Raja is from a converted Christian community and submitted fake certificates to make himself eligible to contest for the Assembly seat reserved for Scheduled Castes.
As a result of the verdict, Raja is not permitted to participate in the ongoing Assembly session. Moreover, the strength of the ruling Left Democratic Front has declined from 99 to 98 seats in the 140-member Kerala Legislative Assembly. While Raja has stated that he will react after studying the verdict order, Kumar expressed confidence in the verdict and is "now happy that the truth has come out."
However, later in the day, the Kerala unit of CPI(M) granted A Raja permission to challenge the High Court verdict in the Supreme Court. The decision was made during a top leadership meeting at the state party headquarters, where Raja was asked to file the appeal on Tuesday itself.
In response to the ruling, Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan has stated that the CPI(M) should publicly apologize to the entire Scheduled Caste community for giving the seat to someone who "became a member by producing fake documents." Satheesan claimed that the issue was brought to the notice of the Returning Officer when the nomination papers were filed, but he failed to take action. Satheesan has also called for appropriate criminal cases to be filed against the CPI(M) candidates for filing fake documents.
