LS Polls 2024: KC Venugopal ups stakes to wrest CPM seat, says Pinarayi Vijayan speaks Modi lingo

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Alappuzha, the citadel of the Communists in Kerala and the land of the historic Punnapra-Vayalar uprising and the martyrs column, huge hoardings of KC Venugopal, the influential AICC general secretary (organisation) and a close associate of Rahul Gandhi, are all over. Venugopal is fighting to wrest the CPM seat, the only Lok Sabha constituency that stood by the Left in 2019 when the Congress-led UDF swept 19 of the 20 seats from the state.

If that explains the Left's political resilience here, Venugopal's entry has upped the stakes for both sides.
«This is an election to save Indian democracy and to save our Constitution,» Venugopal said when ET caught up with him at Aryad on the outskirts of the town. «The Congress is leading that fight, along with the INDIA alliance parties, against the Modi government.

Every single seat, every single vote counts. I am sure the people of Alappuzha will stand by the Congress in this historic battle».

Venugopal has trained expertise in taking the fight to the Left strongholds; he cut his teeth in the Congress student's wing in his birthplace of Payyanur in Kannur, another Communist base.

As he progressed to the party leadership, the Congress politically relocated Venugopal to Alappuzha where he won three consecutive assembly polls from 1996 and two Lok Sabha polls in 2009 and 2014. CPM reclaimed the seat in 2019 — when Venugopal took a break from electoral contest due to organisational preoccupation with the leadership placing him in the RS from Rajasthan.