The headline-grabbing political defection of prime Congress chief A.Ok. Antony’s son Anil Antony to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appears to sign the beginning of an ominous season of shifting political allegiances forward of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
At current, the Congress seems essentially the most weak. Nevertheless, the jury is out on whether the fizz created by Mr. Anil’s flight to the BJP fold will flameout or spur more desertions from the Congress.
BJP State president Ok. Surendran has put the political hearsay mill in overdrive by claiming that more Congress rank and file will observe Mr. Anil.
The BJP feels it has achieved a propaganda benefit by “flipping over” Mr. Anil to its facet. It perceives Mr. Antony’s son as a very good catch for the celebration. It has helped the BJP to posture that its outreach to minorities has gained some traction amongst Kerala’s Christians.
Notably, Mr. Anil’s defection comes shut on the heels of Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church head Baselios Mar Thoma Mathews III’s high-profile assembly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Wednesday. The Catholicos has invited Mr. Modi to go to the Church’s headquarters in Kottayam.
Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president Ok. Sudhakaran, MP, termed Mr. Anil a turncoat of no consequence. The BJP was a graveyard of individuals who had shortsightedly forsaken the Congress to curry favour with the Modi authorities, he stated.
Nevertheless, given his well-known surname, Mr. Anil’s pro-right-wing rhetoric has considerably alarmed the Congress. He had termed the Congress a celebration run by a clique that just lately adopted a hard-Left tack and frowned on nationalistic pleasure.
The CPI(M) additionally weighed the political impression of Mr. Anil’s defection.
The CPI(M) purportedly senses a possibility in Mr. Anil’s political shift to herd the Congress and the BJP into the identical political nook to drive a wedge between United Democratic Front (UDF) allies, mainly the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and the Congress.
The CPI(M) had portrayed the IUML as a secular-democratic celebration that stood for minority welfare and repeatedly urged it to enter right into a “broad agreement” with the Left to discourage the BJP’s ascendancy.
