Kerala Congress-Mani announces sitting Kottayam MP Chazhikadan to re-contest

KERALA Congress-Mani's sitting Kottayam MP Thomas Chazhikadan will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from the same seat, the party announced on Monday.

The announcement was made at Kottayam by KC-M Chairman Jose K. Mani.

"Thomas Chazhikadan has been unanimously chosen to contest again from Kottayam," he said.

Chazhikadan, 71, is a chartered accountant by profession and was thrust into politics when his brother Babu Chazhikadan, a candidate in the 1991 Assembly polls, died after being struck by lightning during his campaign.

It was after the tragedy that Chazhikadan was brought into politics and he won all elections till 2011 when he lost to CPI-M candidate Suresh Kurup and was defeated again in the 2016 polls.

But in 2019 when the KC-M was the third biggest constituent of the Congress-led UDF, Chazhikadan was chosen to contest the Kottayam seat and he won defeating the present state Ports and Cooperation Minister V.N.Vasavan with a margin of over one lakh votes.

Incidentally, after the KC-M's iconic founder K.M.Mani passed away in 2019, the party's relations with the Congress got strained and soon after that, Jose K. Mani faction joined the ruling LDF, led by the CPI-M.

Hence Thomas, who contested at the 2019 Lok Sabha polls for the Congress-led UDF, will be contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha polls as part of the LDF.