The Kerala Story: Congress-led UDF sweeps state but BJP scripts history

In a major upset, BJP candidate and former Rajya Sabha member Suresh Gopi won Thrissur with a margin of 74,000 votes, beating his two heavyweight rivals — senior Congress leader K. Muraleedharan and CPI’s V.S. Sunil Kumar. This is the first time that the BJP has secured a seat in the state, which has traditionally seen a two-way fight between the UDF and the LDF.

For the CPI (M), the only saving grace came from Alathur, which its senior leader and former state minister K. Radhakrishnan wrested from sitting Congress MP Ramya Haridas. CPI(M)’s lone sitting MP A.M. Ariff too lost Alappuzha to Congress general secretary K.C.Venugopal.

Within the UDF, Congress allies Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), regional Christian party Kerala Congress and Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) also managed to win seats. While the IUML fought, and won, two seats while both Kerala Congress and the RSP scored a seat each.

In contrast, CPI (M)’s allies CPI and Kerala Congress (M) drew a blank.

One of the most closely watched contests in the state was in Thiruvananthapuram, where, although he lost his maiden election, Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar reduced sitting MP Shashi Tharoor’s victory margin to 15,000 votes from 99,000 in 2019.

In Attingal, another Union minister, V. Muraleedharan, lost the race to Congress sitting MP Adoor Prakash. Despite the defeat, however, the BJP’s vote share went up this election, going to 3.11 lakh from 2.48 lakh in 2019.

Other prominent winners from Kerala include former Congress president Rahul Gandhi (Wayanad), K. Sudhakaran (Kannur), Kodikunnil Suresh (Mavelikara), and N. K. Premachandran (Kollam).

Significant among those who lost are CPI(M) politburo member A. Vijayaraghavan (Palakkad), central committee members Elamaram Kareem (Kozhikode), Thomas Isaac (Pathanamthitta) and K.K. Shailaja (Vadakara).

Most UDF winners have been able to either retain their earlier victory margin or increase their lead, indicating it was a landslide mandate on the ground. In the Left bastion of Vadakara, Congress’ Shafi Parambil won the seat by a margin of 1.14 lakh votes.

The only exception to this was in Wayanad, where Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s margin came down to 3.64 lakh from 4.31 lakh in 2019. Despite this, Gandhi secured 59.69 percent of the votes polled against 26.09 percent of CPI candidate Anni Raja and 13 percent of BJP’s K. Surendran.