A day after the elections were announced for the Kerala Legislative Assembly, junior partners in the ruling CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front and the Opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front have started clamouring for more seats.
From the LDF, the junior partner, Revolutionary Socialist Party went public first, demanding seven seats, four more than it contested in the 2006 polls.
“We want to contest Haripad and Kollam constituencies. These were our traditional seats and we want them back,” said RSP general secretary, V.P. Ramakrishna Pillai.
The RSP once had a strong base in Kollam but a series of splits has weakened the party base and also its bargaining power. Now the party claims to have regained the lost ground and hence its demand for more seats.
Another junior partner in the LDF, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), is also not satisfied with the existing two seats. “We will ask for more in the LDF meeting and we hope to get a positive response from the leadership,” said NCP MLA, A.K. Saseendran.
The demands of junior partners are likely to be discussed after CPI(M) concludes its two-day state committee meeting scheduled for March 8 and 9. Many in the LDF feel that the partners are making demands for more seats just to hold on to their existing ones.
They fear that ‘big brother’ CPI(M), which contested 84 of the 140 seats in 2006, might make an attempt to take away some from their kitty. The situation in the Opposition Congress-led UDF also appears to be knotty. Since 2006, the front has got at least four more new allies including the Kerala Congress (Joseph) and the Janata Dal (Secular) who crossed over from the Left.
With the Congress likely to contest 75 seats, the rest of the partners including the Indian Union Muslim League and Kerala Congress (M) would be left with 65 seats to share.
Clearly it’s going to be a tough call for both the LDF and the UDF to come out with a `` please all’’ seat sharing formula. But it’s a fact that the coalition which gets it right from the word go will have a head start in the poll campaign.