Thiruvananthapuram: Dharmadom constituency was formed in 2008, by reconstituting parts of the Thalassery constituency and Edakkad constituency which was merged in the reconstitution. The first election in the newly formed Dharamadom constituency was held in 2011. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was elected to the Assembly from the constituency in 2016.
History
The constituency includes Pinarayi Parappuram, which was the venue for the first meeting of the Communist party after its inception. Dharamadom constituency includes Chembilod, Kadambur, Peralassery, Dharmadom, Pinarayi, Muzhappilangad, Vengad, Anjarakkandi panchayaths in Edakkad and Thalassery blocks.
In the first election here, in 2011, LDF candidate K.K. Narayanan won with a margin of 15,162 votes. In the next election, in 2016, Pinarayi Vijayan doubled the majority margin and reached the Assembly. Vijayan had aggregated a majority of 36,905 votes at Dharmadom. Both times, Congress’s Mambaram Divakaran was the UDF candidate.
The politics of the constituency
The strong Left wave in Dharmadom during the local body adds strength to the Left camp in Dharamadom. Seven of the eight Panchayaths, except Kadambur, are now with the Left. With the history of perennial victory, the Left Front is not excepting any drastic change in the constituency in the upcoming election.
For the UDF which has only tasted failure in both the elections in Dharamadom, since its formation, winning in the red fortress is a matter of privilege. The UDF camps are mulling over the right candidate to win in this constituency.
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Even though the civic body election results and the previous history are all unfavourable, the UDF camp keeps hope in their poll planks including Sabarimala and allegations against the Government. The only relief for the UDF is that it could perform well during the parliament elections in 2019 and Kadambur Panchayath in the local body elections.
The UDF and the Bharathiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) are planning to field powerful candidates against Vijayan in Dharmadom.
It is hinted that C Raghunath, District Congress Committee general secretary and a native of Anjarakkandy Vandikkaran Peedika in Dharmadom constituency would be fielded by the UDF. Raghunath was the UDF’s election convenor for the constituency in the past four elections.
The Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) had considered All India Congress Committee (AICC) spokesperson Shama Muhammed and Forward Block all India general secretary G Devarajan to challenge the CM. Ramesh Chennithala had also said in Delhi that the Congress leadership is ready to allot the seat to Devarajan if he is interested. However, the UDF and the Congress leaders have not yet decided on candidates for Dharmadom.
The BJP, which was in the third position at Dharmadom during the 2016 polls, is also looking for the right candidate - probably a frontline leader.
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Priority is for C K Padmanabhan, a national executive committee member of the BJP, who might be fielded in Dharmadom. It is as directed by the national leadership that the State leaders are left to chose a very powerful politician against Pinarayi Vijayan, in his sitting constituency. If the party’s central leadership demands so, CK Padhmanabhan would come to the fore and contest.
CKP is one of the most senior leaders from Kerala for the BJP. C K Padmanabhan, who had entered active politics through Bharathiya Jana Sangham in 1969, later turned out to be an RSS person. When the BJP was formed in the 1980s, he was the Kozhikode district general secretary, and later, state president for the BJP. Presently, CKP is the national executive committee member of the party.
Whoever is in the run-up to the elections against the CM in Dharamadom, the constituency grabs media attention from across the nation. Right from the time of inception, the NDA which remains in the third position remains irrelevant in Dharmadom. Though the NDA will not have anything much to claim in the red fortress, the NDA is mainly looking at increasing the voting percentage. As per Election Commission’s statistics, the electorate in Dharmadom includes 87467 men, 101697 women and 2 transgenders.
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