Analysis | Lotus bloom outshines UDF sweep in Kerala
Never again can Kerala claim to be the only state that had managed to keep a marauding BJP out of its borders.
Never again can Kerala claim to be the only state that had managed to keep a marauding BJP out of its borders.
Never again can Kerala claim to be the only state that had managed to keep a marauding BJP out of its borders.
The BJP's humongous win in a single seat in Kerala has outclassed even the UDF's near sweep of the 2024 Kerala Lok Sabha polls, a repeat of its sterling 2019 feat.
The lone BJP win, of Suresh Gopi in Thrissur, has messed up Kerala's electoral behaviour like never before. Like last general elections, the LDF had won just one seat (if it was Alappuzha in 2019, it is Alathur this time) but never before has its tally looked worse. There could be no greater political disgrace for the CPM than to share the same tally as the BJP in Kerala. One each. Historic for one. Dishonour for the other.
Without doubt, the UDF's second consecutive near-sweep is exceptional. It clearly will be considered as the foundational performance on which the Congress mounted a reasonable revival at the national level. But by winning Thrissur with a mighty margin (74,686), it was the BJP that has made history in Kerala. Never again can Kerala claim to be the only state that had managed to keep a marauding BJP out of its borders.
A three-cornered fight that was considered too close to call, when the results were out, was shown to be just a stroll in the park for Gopi. Though no pushovers politically, both V S Sunil Kumar (CPI) and K Muraleedharan (Congress) were reduced to cardboard defences that could be blown away by even a gentle breeze.
Gopi had decisive leads in minority-dominated regions of the constituency, proof that the actor had a kind of universal appeal no BJP leader in Kerala had ever managed to enjoy.
For most of the counting period, the BJP had even threatened to double the impact. Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar came sniffing distance near victory in Thiruvananthapuram but the coast and the pastoral southern regions of the constituency (Kovalam, Neyyatinkara, Parassala) pulled up Shashi Tharoor, like these areas did in 2014, and smoothly hauled him over to a narrow but record fourth win. Tharoor's victory margin of over 16,000 votes, in the end, looked healthier than his 2014 margin of 15,470. Ironically, his 2014 opponent, O Rajagopal's prophesy that Tharoor was unbeatable had come true.
With Chandrasekhar stopped in his tracks, and UDF's 'two short of perfect 20' performance, Gopi's victory might look out of place, an outlier. The fact is, 2024 is also the story of BJP's surge. Looks like it was in Kerala alone that BJP could sell its hyperbole slogan 'ab ki baar, char sau paar'.
It helped that Gopi did not convey the sense of a standard BJP leader. He eagerly wooed the minorities and made it a point to speak deferentially of legends of other parties, especially former chief ministers E K Nayanar and K Karunakaran. In short, he was not seen as someone out of the Sangh Parivar flock.
Gopi's peculiar appeal notwithstanding, it is also true that the party, especially the central leadership, went out of its way to boost his chances. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Thrissur four times before polls, one of which was to attend Gopi's daughter's marriage. There was a clear message: Modi has staked his prestige on Thrissur and Gopi.
It was not just Gopi who rode a rising BJP wave in Kerala. Gopi's victory can be seen as a massive spike in a general trend of soaring BJP acceptance in Kerala. In 2024, the BJP's vote share has gone up over 3%, from 13% in 2019 to over 16% this time.
But this overall vote percentage masks the more than usual enthusiasm the party has whipped up in several constituencies, especially in South Kerala.
There are 13 constituencies where the party has secured more than 15% votes. In 2019, there were only eight such constituencies. And this time, there are three where the BJP has secured over 30% of the polled votes: Thrissur (37.8%), Thiruvananthapuram (35.52%) and Attingal (31.7%). In 2019, only Thiruvananthapuram had given over 30% votes to the BJP. Till 2019, the highest percentage of votes polled by the BJP was the 32.32% secured by O Rajagopal in 2014.
Anti-incumbency
If a surge in BJP's popularity was one of the predominant trends of the 2024 Lok sabha polls in Kerala, the second and perhaps the more decisive was anti-incumbency. Some of CPM's most popular names -- K K Shailaja, T M Thomas Isaac and M V Jayarajan -- fell by the wayside. Former finance minister Isaac's loss was emblematic of the public resentment of Pinarayi Vijayan government's handling of the economy.
Many voters Onmanrorama had talked to in Pathanamthitta had heaped the blame of the delayed social security pensions and overall increase in the prices of essential commodities on Isaac as he, though out of government, was still seen as the CPM's chief fiscal strategist. Like in 2019, the politics of murder seems to have been the undoing of CPM stalwarts in Kozhikode, Kannur, Vadakara and Kasaragod. Only Devaswom minister K Radhakrishnan could buck the anti-incumbency mood that swept Kerala this time.
On one side there were governance and political issues: the fiscal crisis (manifested in the delay in the payment of social welfare pensions), man-animal conflict, campus violence (embodied in the death of veterinary student J S Siddharth) and politics of murder (a reminder of which was the accidental explosion of a country-made bomb in April that killed one person in Panur, and another was the High Court verdict in February that upheld the Kozhikode Additional Sessions Court verdict of life imprisonment for those accused in the murder of RMP leader T P Chandrasekharan on May 4, 2012).
In short, the verdict was against the Pinarayi government than for the UDF.