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And this is not a rare coincidence, as the top political fronts — the ruling CPM-led Left Democratic Front and the opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front — would like to believe.
If you look deeper into the poll data, the A-plus seats, where the BJP-led NDA should consider its candidate’s chances of winning, have increased to 20. Out of 140 assembly constituencies, the NDA has led in 11 seats and stood second in nine Lok Sabha seats of Thiruvananthapuram, Attingal, Alappuzha, Palakkad and Kasargod. These crucial statistics are significant for Suresh Gopi, the first BJP MLA elected on the lotus symbol from Kerala, who has won from Thrissur constituency, as the saffron party is making a fresh entry into the territory considered taboo for the BJP for nearly seven decades since the formation of the state. The BJP has only one MLA in the state so far.
Erosive base
The decline in vote bank has been witnessed in the major political fronts – the ruling LDF and the opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) – the two parties that have so far dominated the electoral pattern of Kerala’s bipolar political arena.
In simple arithmetic, the decline in LDF’s vote share by 3.03 per cent and UDF’s by 2.27 per cent compared to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections means that the BJP has benefited from this erosion.
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While this may be a statistically correct estimate, the LDF and the UDF have historically denied any such political assumption and have instead engaged in mudslinging at each other to divert attention and gain advantage from the BJP-led front.
not anymore.
“There is a clear shift in the preferences of voters across sections. The reality is that the bipolar nature of Kerala politics has broken down. It is now a tripolar story, and there is no going back,” K Balachandran, a senior journalist and noted political commentator, told Livemint.com.
They say the surge in the BJP-led NDA’s vote share is a “natural progression” that cannot be denied now. Political analysts, mostly leaning towards the Left, have confirmed this. They do not wish to be identified.
Ezhavas, LDF’s traditional supporters from the Hindu community, are feeling let down by the CPM’s excessive lust for the Muslim vote, as reflected in its election strategy of prioritising the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in this Lok Sabha election campaign. They felt it was not a major election issue this time, and the state government would have little say in the matter.
Over the years, the majority of the Ezhava community has gradually shifted its allegiance, many openly and some covertly, a fact the CPM acknowledges behind the closed doors of its rigid organisational structure.
However, that erosion could not be arrested because the party’s structural identity was as the supreme entity apart from the government when it was in power, which is no longer the case. After the Pinarayi regime emerged in 2016, and especially since it got an unprecedented second term, the centre of power within the party and the government revolved solely around the imposing personality of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. This meant that the organisational influence of the CPM eroded so much that it became difficult to even think of any corrective measures.
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Default winner, but…
The Congress-led UDF has its own troubles as its organisational structure is in shambles. But after a series of electoral setbacks since the Modi government came to power in 2014, it has now emerged as the main opposition party at the Centre, giving the party and the UDF an edge in Kerala. The spate of its leaders in the state joining the BJP, though not at the top of the hierarchy, has almost ended with this election.
The Congress and its allies may now consider the possibility of walking away from coming to power in the state, where assembly elections are due in a year and a half. This stops the flow, but the bigger problem is the lack of organisational preparedness to take advantage of this surge in anti-CPM sentiment in the local body elections, which are due a year from now.
Scent of saffron
This is where the BJP’s strength will come into play. The BJP will expand power equations from its Palakkad Municipal Corporation headquarters and will probably make maximum gains in the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, where it is currently the main opposition. Given that the Congress is organisationally weak to take advantage of the anti-government sentiment prevailing in the capital city, it may well benefit.
If the BJP manages to perform better than expected in the local body elections, the Congress will not get power easily, as is the common belief in the KPCC.
If the BJP can field popular candidates like Suresh Gopi and sideline tried and tested political figures who have failed, and dilute its ultra-nationalist credentials, it can hope to attract minority votes in Kerala, a prerequisite for its political rise in the state where Muslims and Christians constitute more than 40 per cent of the total population.
“It is almost certain that the BJP will carry forward its new momentum into the local body elections and the Assembly polls two years later,” says Balachandran.
Now, as the first BJP candidate to win a Lok Sabha election, Suresh Gopi has given the party’s central leadership an opportunity to think differently — that is, to skip the usual candidate selection process and bring forward more popular choices or crowd-pullers, who may not be directly connected to the saffron camp.
This is not good news for the BJP’s state unit workers. Still, it could open up more possibilities for the Sangh, which has been desperately trying to break the party’s ‘untouchability’ tag. The curse has finally been broken, but it needed a non-hardcore Sanghi candidate to lead it.
“They (the BJP) have been able to successfully reach out to the Hindu community, many of whom were previously opposed to the Hindutva ideology, and also a section of Christians who feel competition with Muslims. Radicalisation among a section of Muslims has also not helped, especially after the attack on TJ Joseph,” says NP Ulekhan, a Delhi-based journalist and executive editor of Open, who hails from Kannur in Kerala, considered a CPM stronghold, referring to a blasphemous paper allegedly written by him.
Of late, the CPM too has been complacent in dealing with the simmering communal tensions and has been resorting to bargaining in the hope of garnering a few votes here and there, says Ulekhan, author of The Untold Vajpayee.
“The pro-BJP trend has declined a bit in the Hindi belt, but it is being embraced enthusiastically in Kerala,” he said.
While political indicators are predicting a clear victory for the saffron in a tripolar electoral arena, the last bastion resisting the saffron wave may also be shaky. Remember, the Kerala scenario was different from the national one, as evident from the support for the Congress in the post-Emergency polls and the crushing defeat the NDA suffered in 2019.
With the NDA’s fortunes faltering in the Gangetic plains, Kerala could yet again write a different political story. To understand this, you just need to read between the lines: two BJP ministers from Kerala were sworn in – one is Suresh Gopi, a natural choice, and the other is George Cherian, who did not even contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Cherian, a former vice-chairman of the National Commission for Minorities, hails from Kottayam, a Christian heartland in Kerala.
The writing is on the wall.
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Published: June 10, 2024, 03:35 PM IST
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