Parties may reach consensus on assembly, local body polls

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Political parties in the LDF and UDF camps are likely to reach consensus on the call for schedule change in the bypolls to Chavara and Kuttanad assembly seats and general elections to local bodies, in the all-party meeting convened by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday.
Sources indicate that the government may agree with the UDF stand that both elections should be postponed in view of the pandemic.
“There could be a consensus on this.Government might also support postponement of local body elections for a short spell so that the new governing councils would come up by January, instead of November,” sources said. There were also reports that not all parties in the LDF subscribed to the call for postponement of local body elections.
Meanwhile, BJP state president K Surendran said that his party was in favour of seeking cancellation of assembly byelections. However, BJP did not support the call for postponement of local body elections, he said.
“Postponement of local body elections would badly affect the developmental activities in the state,” Surendran said here on Thursday.
According to him, both LDF and UDF were fearing backlash in local body elections. “The UDF demand seeking postponement of both the elections is strange,” he added.
The government hopes that a joint plea by political parties would help to elicit a favourable decision from the Election Commission.