Kerala Assembly Polls: BJP Targets 30 Seats, Faces Tough Electoral Challenges

Thiruvananthapuram: Pulling out all the stops to make an electoral breakthrough, the BJP in Kerala has made a head start in pre-campaign preparations for the upcoming Assembly polls.

In a political landscape dominated by coalitions led by the CPI(M) and the Congress, the BJP has been a consistent loser in Assembly elections in Kerala. The lone exception was in 2016, when senior leader O. Rajagopal pulled off a victory in a seat in Thiruvananthapuram. In 2021, the party drew a blank again.

In a morale-boosting victory, the party won its first Lok Sabha seat from Kerala in 2024, when actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi romped home in Thrissur.

The party’s strategy in the ensuing polls is to focus on around 30 select seats instead of spreading its resources and energy across all 140 constituencies in the length and breadth of the state. A handful of seats will be allotted to minor allies, who do not count for much.

Even as leaders assert, for public consumption, that the party is contesting the election to form the government, they are well aware that this would be a wild-goose chase in the prevailing scenario. Annexing a handful of seats is a more realistic goal this time, which in itself could help reshape the long-prevailing political pattern of the state in due course.

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The party has already drawn up a provisional list of candidates and constituencies after in-house interactions and initial rounds of strategic sessions.

The line-up includes state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar in Nemom and former Union minister V. Muraleedharan in Kazhakkoottam—both seats in the state capital region.

Former DGP R. Sreelekha, now a corporator in Thiruvananthapuram; the party’s prominent women leader Sobha Surendran; and Congress stalwart late K. Karunakaran’s daughter Padmaja Venugopal also figure as probable contestants. Congress veteran A.K. Antony’s son, Anup Antony, is expected to be fielded from a seat in the Christian heartland of central Travancore.

The party’s targeted regions include the state capital, where it has crossed a psychological barrier by seizing control of the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation in the local body elections held in December. As per the local body poll count, the BJP has a lead over rivals in three Assembly segments within the state capital region.

Up north, Manjeswaram, bordering Karnataka, is another seat where the party stands a good chance. Former state president K. Surendran is the party’s choice for the seat.

Despite the good showing in local body polls, the party still faces formidable odds in the state.

The biggest challenge before it is Kerala’s demographic composition, with Muslim and Christian minorities accounting for nearly half the electorate. This means that even in strategically targeted seats, consolidation of Hindu votes cutting across caste divides is critical for victory.

As things stand, the CPI(M)-led LDF has a firm grip over the Hindu vote, especially among the numerically strong Ezhava community. The BJP will have to win the support of at least a section of the traditionally Left-leaning Ezhava electorate to pull off victories in many of the constituencies it is focusing on.

The party also needs to attract smaller OBC groups and a section of SC voters. This would require accommodating candidates from these communities in some seats, without alienating others.

At the same time, the party must remain ultra-vigilant to safeguard its support among forward communities, especially the Nair community. Large sections of Congress supporters among the Nairs have shifted towards the BJP in recent years, particularly after the party’s rise nationally with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as its central icon.

This segment has contributed substantially to the increase in the BJP’s vote share in recent elections, including the mid-December civic polls. Any shift of this vote bank back towards the Congress, driven by anti-incumbency sentiment against the LDF, could prove fatal to BJP candidates in several constituencies, including those in the state capital.

The local body polls also witnessed an overwhelming consolidation of minority communities in favour of the UDF. This has compelled the LDF to focus more on majority community support, a move that could further hurt the BJP.

The BJP’s Christian outreach project has failed to gain much traction after initial resonance. Reports of attacks on Christian institutions in states like Chhattisgarh have cast a shadow over the initiative. Still, BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar has resumed efforts to win back Christian support, especially from the influential Syro-Malabar Catholic Church.

Recently, Union Minister Kiran Rijiju called on a senior bishop of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church during his visit to Kochi. Chandrasekhar, who was present, said the community’s demand for Christians to be categorised as a ‘micro-minority’ for minority privileges would be taken up with the Centre in all seriousness.

However, such assurances may not make a significant difference, as a strong perception persists that the community’s interests would be better secured under the UDF, so long as the BJP remains a distant third force in Kerala’s electoral contest.

Another grim challenge is countering tactical voting by the Muslim community in constituencies where the BJP emerges as the principal challenger to either the LDF or the UDF. Past experience suggests that in such situations, large sections of Muslim voters tend to support whichever candidate is best placed to defeat the BJP, irrespective of whether the candidate belongs to the UDF or the LDF.

The visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the state next month is expected to impart a major thrust to the BJP’s campaign. Modi is likely to unveil the party’s development vision for Kerala at a massive rally, most probably in the state capital.

While the ‘double-engine development model’ will be highlighted as the party’s central campaign plank, contentious issues such as the Sabarimala gold scam are also expected to be leveraged to take on both the LDF and the UDF.