With local body polls hardly a few months away, opposing fronts at the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation have sharpened their attacks on rivals. This was evident in recent meetings of the Corporation council which have witnessed a flurry of corruption allegations, protests and scuffles, sometimes requiring the intervention of police personnel.

After the prolonged protests over revenue collection issues in 2021, the current term was fairly peaceful, with disruption of council meetings being rare events. However, this seems to have changed over the past few weeks.

Corruption allegations

In a council meeting on June 26, the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) put the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the defensive by levelling corruption allegations against two of its councillors. Punnakkamugal councillor P.V. Manju was accused of aiding a coverup in the alleged misappropriation of around ₹3 lakh collected by the local Haritha Karma Sena (HKS) unit as user fee from households in the ward. The issue came to light when some of the members of the unit raised a complaint with the junior health inspector that their monthly wages, which is dependent on the user fee, was delayed.

Pappanamcode councillor G.S. Asha Nath was accused of collecting money from beneficiaries for providing the Corporation’s application for various schemes. The BJP defended both the councillors vehemently. At the next council meeting on Monday, the two councillors were at the forefront of violent protests when the BJP levelled corruption allegations against the LDF, which was accused of favouritism in the inclusion of an LDF councillor’s name in the list for appointment of sanitation workers. The LDF maintained that the list was prepared in a transparent manner through the Employment Exchange.

Even as the two fronts appear to be planning to go ahead with more protests over the allegations, the United Democratic Front (UDF) has not really made its presence felt, reflective of its diminished numbers in the council.

In 2020 local body elections, the LDF had weathered a stiff challenge from the BJP to improve its numbers in the 100-ward council to 51 from 43 in 2015. It also got the support of three independent councillors and also managed to win the three byelections which were held in the current term. The BJP, which had made major gains in 2015, improving its tally from six seats to 35, remained almost static at 34 seats.

With the redrawing of the ward contours and the increase of one more ward after the recent delimitation, the three fronts are expected to go all out to retain their strongholds and wrest control of wards which they lost last time around.