Bowing to pressure from the Syro Malabar Catholic Church (SMC), the Congress decided to deny PT Thomas, the sitting MP from Idukki, a ticket to contest the Lok Sabha elections slated for April 10. Another prominent Congress MP, PC Chacko, has moved his constituency from Thrissur to Chalakkudi following opposition from a faction in the Congress and also SMC's Thrissur diocese.

These decisions were taken at the 4 hour-long talks between Kerala's Congress leaders and the AICC Screening Committee in New Delhi today. Thomas and Chacko would have faced a tough contest if they had contested from Idukki and Thrissur although they are traditional Congress citadels. The Kerala-based SMC is India's largest Catholic church.

Except Thomas and N. Peethambara Kurup, the Kollam MP, all the 11 sitting Congress members have been issued tickets again. Kurup was sacrificed to give the Kollam seat to the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) which joined the United Democratic Front (UDF) three days ago ending its three decade-long membership in the opposition Left Democratic Front (LDF).

Thomas, a close confidant of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, was dropped following strong opposition from the SMC's Idukki diocese. Thomas became the church's bte noire after he opposed the ongoing agitation by the settler farmers it leads in the state's two high range districts -Idukki and Wayanad- against the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests' (MoEF) decision to implement the K Kasturirangan Report on Western Ghats. The agitators say the report which envisages the inclusion of 13000 sq km as Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA) would lead to the takeover of their farmland. Under pressure from Kerala's Congress leaders, the MoEF has now released a draft notification to put the report in cold storage.

Chacko, who was chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee that probed the 2G Spectrum scam, fled from Thrissur following opposition from the "I" faction in the Congress and also Syro Malabar church's Thrissur Bishop Mar Andrews Thazhath. While the I faction opposed Chacko for his hostility to it, Bishop Thazhath said the MP should not be given ticket again for his alleged lack of interest in the development of Thrissur.

KP Dhanapalan, the sitting Congress MP from Chalakkudi, had to move to Thrissur to give way to Chacko. Dhanapalan was hardly happy with this and said, "I am not as important to the party as Chacko and had to go by what the leadership dictated". Though the SMC was not too keen to have Dhanapalan as the Thrissur candidate, Union Defence Minister AK Antony's intervention made the bishops agree. Dhanapalan has been a longtime Antony loyalist.

Though Chalakkudi is a Congress bastion, the contest this time would not be easy here for Chacko since his opponent is Innocent, a popular film actor whom the LDF has fielded as an independent.

The farmers' agitation is led by the church and its Idukki diocese's Bishop Mar Mathew Anikkuzhikkattil had demanded that Thomas should not be fielded. This led to a war of words between Thomas and the bishop. "I challenge the bishop to defeat me," Thomas had said.

The bishop threatened the agitators would even field an independent candidate of their own if Thomas was fielded. Kerala Congress (M), the third UDF constituent which is controlled by the church, too was openly backing the agitation and demanding the seat be allotted to it. But Congress denied this and fielded debutant Dean Kuriakose, the state Youth Congress president, from Idukki. The LDF which backed the farmers' agitation fielded the church's legal advisor, Joyce George, as an independent candidate from Idukki. This makes the CPI(M)'s candidates' list having a record number of five independents.

After he was dropped, Thomas lamented: "Some priests bayed for my blood and herded the flock to the Communist camp". CM Oommen Chandy has promised Thomas to be made an AICC secretary.

Thomas was the only major leader from the Congress who held that the agitation was unwarranted as the report should be implemented for the protection of the environment and did not have anything harmful for the farmers. Unlike Thomas, neither his party nor the ruling UDF dared to oppose the agitation fearing a backlash from its traditional allies, the farmer community and the church.

