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Journalism of Courage
As the Lok Sabha elections approach, the BJP is looking to break its Kerala jinx and breach the southern state where it has never won a parliamentary seat. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s roadshow followed by a huge women’s rally in Thrissur last week, the party has sounded the poll bugle in the state.
But instead of spreading itself thin in a state where it does not yet have the organisational heft of its rivals, the party has chosen to focus on a handful of seats that have shown promise in the past. Thrissur is one such constituency where the BJP fancies its chances against the Left and the Congress. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP fielded actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi from the seat and garnered 28.2% of the vote share as against veteran party leader K P Sreesan’s 11.15% in 2014, showing that his “star status” can help the party bump up its vote share.
The BJP has strongly hinted that Gopi, a former Rajya Sabha MP, will be its candidate from Thrissur. Apart from banking on the actor, who accompanied Modi on his roadshow, the BJP is also expecting a significant chunk of Christians in the constituency to vote for it, especially after the recent outreach programmes.
Another parliamentary constituency where the BJP fancies its chances is Thiruvananthapuram, where the Congress’s Shashi Tharoor is likely to seek a fourth straight term. Thiruvananthapuram has been a silver lining for the BJP as it is the only seat of the state’s 20 Lok Sabha constituencies where it has been the runner-up in the last two elections, pushing the CPI(M) to third place. Its best show was in 2014 when party veteran O Rajagopal, who got 32.32% of the votes, narrowly lost out to Tharoor who received 34.09% of the votes. Rajagopal had increased his vote share by more than 20 percentage points when compared to the 2009 elections.
Rajagopal is a popular leader and managed to garner votes from outside the ambit of the Sangh Parivar as the constituency has a significant upper-class Hindu vote bank and the BJP has a better grassroots structure compared to other constituencies. In 2019, the BJP’s Kummanam Rajasekharan also secured more than 31% of the votes but again lost out to Tharoor who polled more than 41% of the votes.
Another constituency the BJP focussed on in 2019 is Pathanamthitta in central Kerala because of the Sabarimala protests. The Congress’s Anto Antony has been winning the seat since 2009. The BJP in 2019 fielded its state president K Surendran, who was at the forefront of the protests, from the constituency. Though he finished third, he managed to increase the party’s vote share from 15.95% in 2014 to 28.97%.
The constituency has around 35% Christian voters, a large number of whom are non-Catholics, while 58% of the voters are Hindus. Of the Hindus, 20% belong to the upper-class Nair community. The BJP will likely strategise to reach out to Christians there. In an indication that Christians have largely shifted their allegiance to the Left from the Congress, the CPI(M) in 2021 won all seven Assembly segments that fall under the Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha seat.
The fourth focal point for the BJP will be the Attingal seat in Thiruvananthapuram district that the Left dominated till the Congress’s Adoor Prakash wrested it from them in 2019. The BJP’s woman face in the state, Shobha Surendran, contested from Attingal and secured 24.18% of the votes, a drastic rise from the 10.6% the party polled five years earlier. The strong BJP performance was attributed to the resentment of Hindus against the CPI(M) over the Sabarimala issue. This time too, the BJP is likely to field a prominent leader from the backward Hindu Ezhava community, which is considered to be influential in the constituency. In 2019, all three parties fielded Ezhava candidates.
The BJP in Kerala has over the years roped in several prominent bureaucrats, actors and sportspersons who have helped to increase the vote share but electoral victory has eluded the party. Also, the party does not boast of a strong grassroots structure in the state like their rivals, especially the CPI(M). The BJP’s ally Dharma Jana Sena is led by the Ezhava community, which has traditionally sided with the CPI(M).
