New BJP star in Kerala: MLA Gopakumar, who joined the party during a missed call drive
Despite running a low-key campaign, ex-teacher Gopakumar won the third seat the BJP won in Kerala elections – Chathannoor – which was a Left stronghold
The BJP won three seats in the recently concluded Kerala Assembly polls. A decade after joining the BJP through the party’s missed-call membership drive, B B Gopakumar emerged as the dark horse of the 2026 Kerala Assembly elections.
Gopakumar wrested the Chathannoor seat from the CPI, which had held it since 2006, in his third attempt. The victory in a constituency with a strong Hindu vote base — traditionally aligned with the Left in Kerala — and the presence of influential community organisations is now being seen as a possible template for the BJP’s expansion in the state.
Chathannoor was one of the three Assembly seats won by the BJP in Kerala this election. The other two — Nemom and Kazhakkoottam — drew attention largely because former Union ministers Rajeev Chandrasekhar and V Muraleedharan were in the fray.
In contrast, the BJP’s Chathannoor campaign remained low-profile, grassroots-driven and largely spearheaded by the RSS. While senior BJP leaders campaigned extensively in other constituencies through roadshows and rallies, Chathannoor saw little fanfare. The only major public event was an indoor women’s convention addressed by Union Health Minister J P Nadda.
“In 2011, BJP secured only 3,839 votes, or 3.36% of the polled votes, while the LDF got over 60,000 votes in this seat. I joined BJP in March 2016 through the missed-call membership drive. The RSS leadership wanted me to contest from the seat,” said Gopakumar, 60, a retired headmaster of an S N Trust school run by the Ezhava community organisation. He had earlier been with the Congress and served as a local body member three decades ago. Currently, he serves as the BJP president for the Thiruvananthapuram zone and has previously served as its Kollam district chief.
Gopakumar finished second in the seat in the 2016 election with a vote share of 24.92%, pushing senior Congress leader Sooranadu Rajasekharan to third place, though the CPI’s G S Jayalal retained the seat. In 2021, contesting again, he raised BJP’s vote share to 30.61%, while again finishing the runner-up.
“I remained active in the constituency despite two defeats. Over the last five years, we intervened in every local issue and demonstrated that BJP was a serious contender. This time, (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi’s development plank and public resentment against the LDF government worked in BJP’s favour,” he said.
Gopakumar has now defeated the CPI’s R Rajendran while garnering 38.54% votes. Since 1967, the Left had won the seat 11 times and the Congress three times.
RSS sources said his campaign was executed with precision and minimal publicity. “Out of the 196 booths, we identified strong support bases in 176 and consolidated them. Sangh workers visited every household four times during the campaign. We deliberately avoided hype, which could have led to consolidation of anti-BJP votes. The candidate had remained visible and active despite two successive defeats. Chathannoor has now become a textbook case for BJP in Kerala. We have managed to breach the Hindu vote base of other parties,” a source said.
Of the constituency’s 1.77 lakh voters, nearly 45% belong to the Ezhava community, traditionally considered a support base of the CPI(M)-led Left in Kerala. Around 27% are upper-caste Nair voters. Both SNDP Yogam, representing Ezhavas, and the Nair Service Society (NSS) have a strong organisational presence in the constituency.
Another notable aspect of the BJP’s win in Chathannoor is that the party does not control any local body in the constituency, which comprises one municipality and six panchayats. In contrast, the two other seats won by the party fall within the BJP-ruled Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation.
Share
