The BJP is focussing on a few districts in Kerala to realise its dream of getting a legislator representing the party elected after a gap of a decade, which, if successful, would mark only the second time the party has had an MLA in the State.

This time, the districts in focus are Thiruvananthapuram, where the BJP won control of the municipal corporation in 2025; Palakkad, where the party managed to get a municipal chairperson elected for the first time in the State’s history in 2015 (it repeated the feat in 2020 and 2025); Thrissur, where it got an MP elected for the first time in 2024; and Kasargod, where the party believes it would get the support of Kannada-speaking people. The party is also eyeing two seats in Pathanamthitta, the district where the Sabarimala temple is located.

This does not mean that the party is any less serious about the other seats. “We are expecting to win seats in every district,” says BJP national secretary Anil K. Antony. The National Democratic Alliance has fielded 122 men and 18 women in the State’s 140 Legislative Assembly seats. The BJP alone has fielded 14 women. No other political party has fielded as many women candidates in the State.

The big fights

Of the 14 constituencies in Thiruvananthapuram district, the big fights involving the BJP are in Kazhakkootam, Nemom, and Vattiyoorkavu.

In Kazhakkootam, former Union Minister V. Muraleedharan is the BJP candidate. He had managed to come second in 2016. The BJP’s Shoba Surendran, who was allotted the seat in 2021, was also placed second. (Shoba has shifted to Palakkad and is running a spirited campaign.) The BJP’s confidence stems from the fact that the party won half of the wards in the local body polls: 14 out of 28.

The Left Democratic Front’s (LDF) candidate is Kadakampally Surendran, a heavyweight sitting MLA who has won twice. Surendran, who is also former Devaswom Minister and was questioned by an SIT over the Sabarimala gold theft case, says he was unfairly targeted.

Surendran, in fact, makes it a point to talk about the Sabarimala case. His party, the CPI(M), has a strong social media team and the feedback appears to be that the candidate must address the issue. “The Kerala High Court is monitoring the case,” Surendran told a few people at one of his public meetings. “Everyone in this constituency knows me very well and what I stand for,” he added.

The Congress has fielded T. Saratchandra Prasad, a former MLA. In 2021, the Congress candidate, S.S. Lal, managed about 34,000 votes and was pushed to the third place. But the Congress is confident this time, and Prasad says that anti-incumbency will propel more voters towards the party. He says that the fight is between the LDF and United Democratic Front (UDF).

However, the BJP believes that it is within striking distance of winning the seat. In 2021, Shoba Surendran managed nearly 30 per cent of the votes. BJP workers in the constituency say they are confident of adding enough votes to see their candidate over the finish line.

The BJP also fancies its chances in Nemom, where another high-voltage tussle is under way among Education Minister V. Sivankutty, BJP State president Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and the Congress’ K.S. Sabarinadhan. Sivankutty won the seat in 2011 and in 2021. In 2016, the BJP’s 87-year-old O. Rajagopal defeated Sivankutty to win the seat—and he remains the lone BJP leader to win an Assembly seat in Kerala. This time, Rajeev Chandrasekhar is leaving no stone unturned to secure a win.

Sabarinadhan was first fielded in 2015 in Aruvikkara after the passing of his father, G. Karthikeyan, left the seat vacant. He won the byelection and went on to win the next election in 2016 from the seat. Sabarinadhan is married to a popular IAS officer, Divya S. Iyer.

Sabarinadhan claims that the wind is blowing in UDF’s direction. “We are getting a great response from the people. This is a pro-UDF constituency,” he said. He believes that the Congress will win if it just sticks to the basics.  

Sivankutty alleges that there are too many “outside elements” that are vitiating the atmosphere in the constituency. On April 5, Sivankutty filed a formal complaint with the Election Commission alleging “suspicious movement of funds” and complaining that too many vehicles registered outside Kerala were moving around regularly in Nemom. The complaint said that a “large volume of parcels were being delivered to BJP election offices”. Sivankutty suspects the parcels contain cash for distribution.

Nemom, all said and done, is a tough constituency. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) resulted in the removal of over 36,000 voters. The final voter count is just over 1.71 lakh. A few thousand votes can separate the winner from the loser in Nemom, and all political parties were watchful during the SIR process.

In Vattiyoorkavu, the BJP has fielded a former Director General of Police, R. Sreelekha. She was the first woman to head the police force in the State, a position she held for several months before she retired in December 2020. She joined the BJP in 2024 and contested and won the local body elections in 2025. “In the BJP a former DGP can become a councillor and a former Governor can contest for an Assembly seat,” said a local platform speaker belonging to the Congress.

Sreelekha makes news for the wrong reasons from time to time. For instance, on April 6, she walked out of a public meeting in the constituency because External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, who was speaking via video conference, forgot to mention her name. Jaishankar sought votes for Rajeev Chandrasekhar and ended his speech. About half a dozen State leaders rushed out of the hall to request Sreelekha to come back. She finally obliged and became a subject of memes across social media. When the media confronted her the next day, Sreelekha denied the whole episode, though it was recorded on camera.

The Congress candidate, veteran leader K. Muraleedharan, son of former Chief Minister K. Karunakaran, won the seat in 2011 and 2016. In 2024, Muraleedharan contested the Lok Sabha election from Thrissur and lost to Suresh Gopi, who became the first BJP MP from the State.

In 2021, the CPI(M)’s V.K. Prasanth contested and won from Vattiyoorkavu. In fact, Prasanth had a short tenure as an MLA before 2021 too after Muraleedharan vacated the seat following his election as an MP. The CPI(M) fielded Prasanth for the byelection.

The constituency is fully within the city limits and the BJP performed well in the recent local body election—securing over 53,000 votes and 10 of the 18 wards. These are the two reasons why the BJP thinks that it can win the seat.

The “Sabarimala” district

In Pathanamthitta, Kerala’s “Sabarimala” district, the BJP hopes that Kummanam Rajasekharan, former Governor of Mizoram, will be able to tip the scales in Aranmula constituency. The other four constituencies in the district are Tiruvalla, Ranni, Konni, and Adoor.  

Rajasekharan contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Thiruvananthapuram, and lost. He was the first State president of the party to be appointed “Governor”, which effectively removed him from active politics.

Rajasekharan’s gubernatorial sojourn lasted under a year as he was asked to contest the Lok Sabha election in 2019.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, at a time when women’s entry in Sabarimala was a burning issue, the BJP’s K. Surendran had managed to secure 50,497 votes in the constituency.

Apart from being on the banks of the Pamba river, Aranmula is home to A. Padmakumar, a key accused in the Sabarimala gold theft case. The sitting MLA is a well-performing Minister, Veena George, who has won the constituency twice. The other challenger is young Abin Varkey, national secretary of the Youth Congress, a first-time contestant.

The BJP’s hopes lie in Veena George and Varkey splitting the Christian votes, resulting in Rajasekaran scraping through. This is not a wild dream. Rajasekharan is actively seeking out the Hindu Nair and Ezhava votes and has left it to the party bigwigs to pull in a section of the Christian votes. Aranmula is one of the larger constituencies in Kerala (2.14 lakh voters), and the UDF is in a strong position with handsome margins in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and thumping wins in the local body polls. But though the UDF won the Assembly seat in 2011, Veena George wrested it for the LDF in the next two elections. 

The Sabarimala shrine is located in Ranni, currently held by the LDF’s Pramod Narayan of the Kerala Congress (Mani) party. The UDF’s candidate is Pazhakulam Madhu. The BJP, which tries to keep the Sabarimala issue alive, has ironically, left the seat to its ally, Twenty20, which has fielded a Christian, Thomas K. Samuel. The fight in Ranni is muted, with the emphasis being on house-to-house canvassing on the part of the BJP’s ally. There is no Hindutva pitch here, obviously!

But, on April 4, Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his speech in Tiruvalla by invoking Lord Ayyappa, the deity of Sabarimala temple. “Both the UDF and LDF had conspired to undermine the sanctity of the hill temple... When such issues arise during LDF rule, the trail extends to elements linked to UDF too,” he said. Modi also questioned the LDF government’s reluctance to seek a CBI probe into the gold theft case.

The very next day, on April 5, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, addressing rallies in Kochi, Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram, spoke about the theft. “Those responsible will be punished within two months of the NDA being voted to power,” he told voters at Kunnathunad in Ernakulam.

The LDF has fielded the sitting MLA, Mathew, T. Thomas, in Tiruvalla. The BJP has given the ticket to Anoop Antony. Varghese Mammen is the UDF candidate.

In Thrissur, where controversies relating to Suresh Gopi’s election are yet to die down (opposition parties had made several allegations including manipulation of voter rolls), a new controversy involving the BJP has erupted. The LDF and the Congress alleged that BJP leaders were trying to bribe voters by distributing free kits containing 18 household items. Thrissur Congress leader Joseph Tajet alleged that the kits were distributed among voters in Sivaramapuram Unnathi.

The CPI and the Congress gave written complaints to Election Commission officials and the police. A warehouse of a bakery was sealed by the police in connection with the allegations. The BJP has denied the allegations, but the controversy refused to die down.

Heavyweights in the Union Ministry, including Nirmala Sitharaman and Kiren Rijuju, were in town over the April 4-5 weekend to pep up the campaign. Of the 13 Assembly constituencies in the district, the BJP is targeting Thrissur, fielding former Congress leader Padmaja Venugopal. The LDF won this seat with a narrow margin in 2021. “The Suresh Gopi factor will work in my favour,” Padmaja told a news website. 

The temple town of Guruvayoor is in this district. N.K. Akbar is the present MLA. From 2006 to 2021, K.V. Abdul Khader of the CPI(M) won from the constituency. In 2001, P.K.K. Bava of the Indian Union Muslim League won.

The BJP candidate, B. Gopalakrishnan, stirred up a controversy recently when he questioned why a Hindu MLA cannot win from the constituency where the temple is located. On March 27, the Kerala High Court asked the Election Commission to decide on the communal remark within two months. The Kerala Chief Electoral Officer said that an FIR had been registered in the Guruvayoor temple police station.

But Gopalakrishnan did not stop with the remark. He has installed a huge billboard in Chavakkad listing all MLAs from 1977—all Muslims. The board says “Do you not see this?” and adds: “This must change—vote for Gopalakrishnan for change.” Guruvayoor, incidentally, is a constituency with a large Muslim population (nearly 50 per cent, according to the 2011 Census) and that is why Muslims are fielded from the seat.

For once, BJP banks on development plank

But for this one aberration, across the State, the BJP’s campaign plank is development. Amit Shah has promised an All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and all candidates of the party talk about how well India is doing after Modi took over as Prime Minister. Bullet trains, huge swanky buildings signifying development, and quick connectivity are among the promises that the BJP candidates and leaders make from various public platforms. There is no talk of Ram, Ayodhya, or the Waqf Bill.

One reason why Kerala is positively disposed towards the BJP is the operation of Vande Bharat trains. There are three in operation—Kasargod-Thiruvananthapuram, Mangalore-Thiruvananthapuram, and Ernakulam-Bengaluru. All the trains generally run to full capacity on most days and have cut down travel time. Though this comes at the cost of other express trains, in a State that has seen little by way of major transport infrastructure development for decades and where even short-haul flights are not financially viable, these trains remain, at best, a band-aid solution. (There is only one such connecting flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Kannur, via Kochi.)

The LDF has also been trying to make sure that the focus remains on development. Posters across Kerala speak of specific projects in each constituency and each district. This is supplemented by talk of development on television and in the print media.

“Over this decade, the Government of Kerala has sought to create and to present to India and the world a democratic, socially inclusive, participatory, high-growth and sustainable alternative development policy,” wrote V.K. Ramachandran, vice chairperson, Kerala State Planning Board, in The Hindu dated April 5, 2026. He listed achievements in health and education, and mentioned the new budget for elderly people and several mobility projects as examples of how well the government has been performing despite financial constraints. “The decade from 2016 to 2026 has been a period of unprecedented economic development in Kerala,” he said.

The LDF’s claims with respect to development are well received, but the Left also faces significant dissent. CPI(M) MLA S. Rajendran is contesting as an Independent in Devikulam. Another leader, G. Sudhakaran, has refused to withdraw his candidature as an Independent from Ambalapuzha. Rajendran has openly claimed that the party neglects Tamil-speaking members (he is one), while Sudhakaran alleges that the two-term limit is enforced selectively.

On April 4, Sudhakaran shared a stage with Rahul Gandhi in Alappuzha. “He [Sudhakaran] is with us today. His change of heart was because the LDF is changing. He was forced to quit because he saw that the LDF was acting contrary to its stated principles,” the Congress leader said.  

Notwithstanding the BJP’s diligent efforts to strengthen its position in the State, the amendment to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act has had the party scrambling to explain the move. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has called it yet another attack on minorities. “The FCRA amendment...targets the Christian community just as the Waqf Bill affects the Muslim community,” he told a public meeting in Elappara in Idukki in central Kerala.

Rijiju later responded to this at his campaign in Thrissur, claiming that the Bill would not affect minorities. “The funds must be used for public welfare. The amendment will only affect those acting against national interest,” he said.

But it remains a tricky issue and the BJP hopes that the “development message” will drown out all the other concerns.

Kerala has four international airports—Kannur, Kozhikode, Kochi, and Thiruvananthapuram—in a short stretch of under 600 km to cater to the over 30 lakh migrants who work and live in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. The curtailing of flights due to the US-Iran war is a huge setback to all the airports, directly affecting more than a lakh blue-collar workers. If the war persists, Kerala will be the worst affected State.

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