The seemingly embarrassing defeat of the BJP, especially in Thiruvananthapuram and Pathanamthitta where a historic victory for the party was most anticipated, could lead to the belief that the party's aggressive Sabarimala campaign had fallen flat. This would be delusional thinking.
At least in Pathanamthitta, the ground zero of the Sabarimala agitation, and even in Thrissur, where film star Suresh Gopi sought to whip up passions in the name of Lord Ayyappa, Kerala voters were seriously swayed by the Sabarimala agitation.
BJP's K Surendran might have ended up an embarrassing third but tentative figures show that he had put up nothing short of an amazing performance in Pathanamthitta. Suresh Gopi, too, came third but he seems to have bettered even Surendran's performance. Kummanam Rajasekharan, the hand-picked candidate of the RSS who came second in Thiruvananthapuram, but has done badly than last time.
Surendran surge
Preliminary figures culled out from the Election Commission website show that Surendran has cornered nearly 30 per cent of the votes polled in Pathanamthitta. In 2014, when the Modi wave was at its peak, the BJP candidate (M T Ramesh) had managed just 16.29 per cent. In other words, Surendran has nearly doubled the vote share of the BJP.
He seems to have eaten into the vote share of both the Congress and CPM candidates. The winner, Congress's Anto Antony, seems to have suffered more. If the vote share of the Left candidate (Veena George) came down from 35.48 per cent to 33.54 percent, the fall in Anto's share was slightly more sharper, from 42 per cent it slipped to 38 per cent.
However, what seems to have worked in Congress's favour in Pathanamthitta was the massive increase in polling percentage from 66 per cent in 2014 to 74.19 percentage this time, the highest increase in voting percentage recorded in the state. This big turnout is now chalked up to minority mobilisation, especially of the dominant Christian community in the constituency. Pollsters also feel that Amit Shah's massive road show on the day before Easter Sunday might have been the trigger.
The BJP national president did all he can to provoke Hindus deeply aggrieved at what happened in Sabarimala after the Supreme Court verdict. Shah's provocative tone might have worked two ways. He could have instilled anger, and a sense of revenge, in the Hindu community against the LDF government. But his show of strength might have seemed so forbidding that minorities would have felt the need to keep the BJP out, and thus turned out in large numbers on voting day.
Therefore, though he amassed votes like no BJP candidate before him, Surendran had to contend with a third position in five of the seven assembly segments in Pathanamthitta. Even in Poonjar, said to be the stronghold of P C George who was in a pre-poll alliance with the BJP, he was a distant third. Anto Antony had a huge lead of 17,929 votes against even CPM's Veena George in Poonjar, which has a strong Christian presence.
In two segments, Konni and Adoor, Surendran was second. Anto Antony, though his vote share fell, stood first in all six Assembly segments except in Adoor where he came third. Veena triumphed only in Adoor, a CPI stronghold.
Suresh Gopi's appeal
In Thrissur, too, though Suresh Gopi had come third, he had managed to vastly improve the vote share of the BJP. If last time it was 11.28 per cent, Gopi's presence pushed it up to nearly 30 per cent, a near 20 per cent increase.
It has to be noted that it was Suresh Gopi who had injected Sabarimala into the campaign. His was the first open and fervent appeal in the name of the Lord. “It is in the background of Sabarimala that I am seeking votes. My Ayyan, My Ayyan, our Ayyan, if this Ayyan is a great feeling of ours then this wicked government would get a fitting reply this election,” he said and got into trouble with the Election Commission.
Here, Gopi seems to have drawn most of his votes from the CPI candidate Rajaji Mathew; the CPI's vote share fell dramatically from 39 per cent to 32 per cent. A clear sign that traditional voters deserted the Left in the backdrop of Sabarimala.
T N Prathapan managed to hold on to the 2014 vote share, though it marginally fell to 41.4 per cent from 42.75 per cent.
Kummanam's no show
However, in Thiruvananthapuram, Kummanam Rajasekharan flattered to deceive. He stood first in only one (Nemom) of the seven Assembly segments. In 2014, when O Rajagopal gave Shashi Tharoor a run for his money, the BJP had a healthy lead in all the four urban segments: Kazhakuttam, Vattiyoorkavu, Thiruvananthapuram and Nemom. Tharoor secured decisive leads in all urban centres except Nemom. Even in Nemom, where he had a deficit of 18,046 votes in 2014, he managed to bring down the deficit to 6227 votes.
In fact, the RSS plan was to manage 40 per cent of the votes. Kummanam ended up getting just 31 per cent, which is marginally lower than the 32.45 per cent O Rajagopal managed in 2014. As if it was a slap on the face of the highly disciplined RSS, it was Tharoor who ended up amassing 40 per cent of the polled votes this time.
The huge margin of Tharoor's victory seems even miraculous. During the campaign it was said that there were no agents in at least 15 booths in the constituency to even receive the money Tharoor had routinely distributed for campaign purposes. This once again points to a huge minority mobilisation in favour of Tharoor to somehow prevent a BJP win.
Tharoor's biggest leads were in Parassala (14,266), Kovalam (13,907) and Neyyatinkara (27,223), three segments dominated by Christian minorities.