With Thrissur rally of ‘2 lakh women’, PM Modi to launch BJP’s LS campaign in Kerala

The party has ensured the participation of several high-profile women achievers in Kerala from various fields at the event. Prior to the meeting, the PM will attend a road show, in which the BJP’s aspirant for the Thrissur Lok Sabha seat, actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi, will participate, among others.

Modi is addressing a mass gathering in Kerala at a time when the ruling CPI(M) has been repeatedly blaming the Centre for “financially stifling” the state by refusing to meet its demand for a better share of tax revenues and raising the ceiling on the state’s borrowing capacity. The recently concluded month-long state-wide tour of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s Cabinet, the Nava Kerala Sadas, was meant to highlight “how the BJP at the Centre has been trying to suffocate the state”.

On Monday, Vijayan mounted an attack on the PM over the violence in Manipur, without naming Modi, but taking a dig at the BJP’s Christmas day bonhomie with members of the community at the PM’s residence in Delhi. Incidentally, Thrissur is a Lok Sabha constituency where the BJP is trying to raise its vote share by bringing Christian voters into its fold.

“Things have reached such a pass in Manipur that a segment of people… Christian community… cannot live… We have seen the governments at the Centre and the state maintaining silence… Now, we have noticed intervention of certain persons who were not willing to stop the genocide. For votes, certain people are ready to wear disguises. Everyone can understand the motive behind this attempt to pretend friendship,” Vijayan had said.

BJP state president K Surendran said Modi’s Thrissur visit would be a landmark in the state’s politics. “The Modi government has ensured a comprehensive development of the state taking into consideration all sections of people. The party is getting enormous support from minorities, which has irritated both the CPI(M) and Congress,” he said.

Surendran said several women icons of Kerala, including textile entrepreneur Beena Kannan, actor and dancer Shobana, cricketer Minnu Mani, singer Vaikkom Vijayalakshmi and 78-year-old Mariyakkutty, who protested against the state government over a delay in disbursing pensions, are set to be among those who will share the dais with Modi at the Thrissur rally.

The BJP, which is yet to win a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala and has won just one Assembly seat to date, has been going all out to open its account in the next elections. In the recent months, several central leaders of the BJP and Union ministers have attended programmes in Kerala to promote the welfare schemes of the BJP government. Last month, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman attended a credit outreach programme at Attingal in Thiruvananthapuram.

In 2014, when senior leader K P Sreesan contested in Thrissur, the BJP got only 11.15% of the vote. When the party fielded Suresh Gopi in 2019, the vote share grew to 28.2% though the Congress’s T N Prathapan was the eventual winner with 39.9% of votes.

Since 1998, Thrissur has been dominated by the Left and the Congress, though neither has won consecutive polls here. In 2019, too, the BJP had identified Thrissur as a priority constituency. Ahead of those elections, Modi had addressed a rally in January 2019 in Thrissur as part of the state convention of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the party’s youth wing. Thrissur was also the first town Modi visited in Kerala after being elected to office in 2014.

But the BJP sees encouragement in its improved performance, raising the stakes for the party in Thrissur for the upcoming elections. Recently, Gopi had taken out a padayatra in Thrissur to protest against corruption in the government after a CPI(M)-controlled cooperative bank in the district came under the Enforcement Directorate’s scanner. The other constituencies where the party finds a fighting chance are Thiruvananthapuram, Palakkad, Kasaragod and Pathanamthitta.

Gopi has openly stated his intention to fight the next Lok Sabha elections from Thrissur and has been concentrating on the issues in the constituency, where the BJP hopes to cobble together the Hindu and Christian vote banks. The BJP state leadership has also indicated Gopi will contest from Thrissur.