Catholic Congress' hard line on courting fundamentalist votes unsettles LDF and UDF campaigns in Nilambur
The Catholic Congress, an influential non-ecclesiastical organisation within the Syro-Malabar Church, appears to have unsettled the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and opposing United Democratic Front (UDF) campaigns in the Nilambur Assembly by-election to some extent on Wednesday by striking a hard line position against the competing fronts soliciting the support of 'radical Islamist' political outfits in the high-stakes and no-holds-barred ballot box battle.
In a strongly worded statement, the organisation, which claims to champion the socio-political interests of the Christian laity, has disavowed the LDF and the UDF's 'dalliance' with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP, chaired by 2008 Bangalore serial blast accused Abdul Nasar Madani) and the Welfare Party of India (WPI, an offshoot of the Jamaat-e-Islami) respectively.
The Christian organisation, which has significant influence among the Christian settler-farmer community in Nilambur, a crucial electoral bloc, warned that enabling ultra-conservative Islamist groups to telegraph their so-called leverage in the bypoll would not bode well for the LDF and the UDF in future elections.
Secular voters
The Catholic Congress also took the line that secular voters would give a befitting reply to the UDF and the LDF's appeasement of 'terrorist forces and political Islam' in upcoming polls.
The LDF and the UDF scrambled to decipher the electoral implications of the Catholic Congress' overt political positioning even as both fronts continued to slug it out over the touchy subject of 'myopically courting fundamentalist votes for short-term political expediency.'
The UDF stated that the LDF had no qualms about seeking the Jamaat-e-Islami's support in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and the 2011 Kerala Assembly elections.
The LDF sought to differentiate between the respective political lines of the WPI and PDP by insisting that the latter eschewed radical Islamism and towed a secular democratic line.
However, the Catholic Congress's hard line stance on the LDF and the UDF courting 'Islamist' forces appeared to give some comfort to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Current stance
A senior BJP leader claimed that the Catholic Congress's current political stance dovetailed with that of the National Democratic Alliance and has buoyed the chances of the party's candidate, who hails from the Christian settler-farmer community in Nilambur.
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