Kerala Assembly Elections 2026: The Third Way

EARLY MORNINGS IN Thiruvananthapuram are an aural delight and easy on the eyes despite the glitter around its numerous temples that together play a variety of devotional songs, from MS Subbulakshmi to Yesudas.

As schoolchildren, we had made parodies of some of them, a creative way to beat the rigour of those demanding PT drills. I meet two men around 5AM who, after having woken up at Brahmamuhurta (around 3.30AM), done their yoga and prayers at a few temples, the proof of which is on their foreheads, are briskly walking back home.

I stop one of them not far from the Raj Bhavan and, to my sur­prise, he turns out to be middle-aged, although he has the demean­our of a pious, older retired man. I quiz him about poll prospects in Kerala’s capital in the upcoming Assembly election to be held on April 9. Unlike most Malayalis who use visual language and sometimes physical aggression to convey that their vote is none of your business, Narayanan is delighted to talk politics. “I think the two constituencies where BJP is sensing an opportunity to win are Kazhakoottam and Nemom,”he says. He doesn’t include the Vattiyoorkavu seat in his quick analysis, but merely concedes that it is also seeing a triangular fight.

In Nemom, Rajeev Chandrasekhar has been working very hard to address the grievances of the people and interacting frequently with them since losing the 2024 General Election to Shashi Tharoor. Chandrasekhar, as the Kerala state president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been active on a day-to-day basis in highlighting political issues and attacking the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) government, especially Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Some of his remarks boomeranged when he gave unscientific explanations about why the infant mortality rate in the state, known for stellar social development indices, is lower than that of the US and several advanced countries, while the figures in states such as Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are unac­ceptably high and require urgent targeted interventions.

In interior Nemom, I meet a lady named Padma at a wheat flour grinding mill where she works. Opposite that shop is a poster of two leading candidates in the fray: Chandrasekhar and V Sivankutty, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) leader and state minister who represents the seat in the outgoing Assembly. ‘Vikasitha Nema­thinu Rajeev’ (Rajeev for a developed Nemom) screams a BJP poster in which Chandrasekhar is seen reverentially holding Prime Minis­ter Narendra Modi’s hand. ‘Nemathinte swantham’ (Nemom’s very own) is the tagline for the Sivankutty poster.

Padma looks at me suspiciously and asks whether I am from any political party. I say no, but she returns a mischievous smile and says, “We treat all politicians the same because their primary interest is not us, but themselves.” She goes on to make more such anti-politician comments but insists that she will vote, as she always does. “We will vote based on the performance record and also out of hope,” she says, without revealing much. After prodding, she says she will vote for anyone who ensures that her dad’s treatment is free. “I read newspapers and am worried about foreign companies coming here for quick profits in the healthcare sector.” She says she doesn’t see why “some of us” are excluded from the development initiatives so far. She still doesn’t divulge whom she favours among the candidates in her constituency. “I haven’t decided yet,” she says.

On overhearing the conversation, a young man in the shop offers his view: “A CPM person will vote for his candidate and a BJP man for his. Likewise, Congress sympathisers will vote for a Congress candidate. But then everyone wants upward mobil­ity. They may or may not want to try a new face; it all depends on the person.” I immediately joke about his Thiruvananthapuram cunning, saying residents of the city have a way with words and always want to confuse people; it is considered a ‘qualification’ you earn by being born and raised in Thiruvananthapuram. Termed BBT, as though it is a degree you can flaunt, its full form is ‘Born and Brought Up in Trivandrum’. He laughs too and says, “I am Ramesh Nair and I think Sivankutty is more familiar to people and Chandrasekhar is seen as a person with a difference.” Later, when I speak with a local CPM leader, he concedes that the fight is tough and that people do want to choose the candidate they assume is best for them, and that no party can lay claim to victory too soon.

Even if one is jaded by the cryptic and enigmatic responses of voters here, the Nemom seat has proved beyond doubt that no party is untouchable. In the recent local body polls, BJP won 15 of the 23 wards in Nemom. In the last Lok Sabha polls, the BJP candi­date had an edge over the winning Congress candidate. It is in the Nemom Assembly seat that a BJP candidate won for the first time in Kerala. In 2016, O Rajagopal became the first BJP MLA in the history of the state. As BJP vows to rewrite Kerala’s electoral history, Nemom stands out because it is one seat where BJP has come sec­ond in multiple elections, first in 2011 and then in 2021, winning a significant number of votes. Although Kerala politics is defined by its two-coalition system—alternating between the CPM-led LDF and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF)—Nemom is one of the handful of seats where BJP has emerged as a strong contender besides securing the seat once.

Political analysts point out that BJP and the Rashtriya Swayam­sevak Sangh (RSS) have an early mover advantage in the seat this time, kicking off their outreach campaign at least a month ago. K Sabarinathan of Congress is seen as a good candidate but not in the league of the other two. Congress’ campaign is also widely viewed as tepid. It looks like all that Congress has done so far is allege that Chandrasekhar had failed to include details of assets purportedly worth `200 crore in his election affidavit, kicking up a row.

Author Pushpa Kurup, who had served for decades as a senior executive in the corporate world, is a resident of the Kazhakkoottam Assembly seat which is witnessing a triangular contest with CPM’s sitting MLA Kadakampally Surendran, former Union minister and BJP leader V Muraleedharan, and Con­gress’ Saratchandra Prasad in the fray. Prasad has come out of the shadows, making him a political lightweight compared with the other two. Kurup al­leges that lately there has been a surge in the “money factor” in Thiruvanantha­puram elections, with some candidates offering money in exchange for votes. She says she knows this from house helps from lower socioeconomic back­grounds and those who live in poorer neighbourhoods.

She adds, “BJP is strong in the capital. It has been for some time. All three parties—the Left, the Con­gress-led UDF, and BJP—have committed voters.” Kurup says that Muraleedharan is a strong contender in Kazhakkoottam, a seat where BJP’s V Muraleedharan and Sobha Surendran came second in the 2016 and 2021 state polls, respectively. Some months ago Muraleedharan had demanded that former state Devaswom min­ister Kadakampally Surendran take responsibility for the alleged Sabarimala gold theft, besides demanding a probe.

In Vattiyoorkkavu constituency, BJP has fielded former DGP R Sreelekha against sitting MLA and former Mayor VK Prashant of CPM. Prashant won the 2019 bypoll and the 2021 state elec­tion from this seat. Also in the fray is Congress heavyweight K Muraleedharan, son of late Congress stalwart K Karunakaran. Muralidharan had won from this seat in 2016 and 2011. In 2016, BJP’s Kummanam Rajasekharan had come second.

Sabloo Thomas, a voter in the constituency, says that Prashant still retains the edge because of his popularity and his boy-next-door image. Another voter from the constituency says that BJP’s chances in this seat are neither high nor low, but not something that can be compared to Kazhakkoottam or Nemom. Thomas, meanwhile, adds that since BJP is expected to do better than it did in the last elections, anti-incumbency votes are going to get divided, much to the anguish of Congress which is hoping to return to power after 10 years of being in the opposition.

In Thiruvananthapuram, BJP has traditionally done well in more seats, including the Lok Sabha seat as well as the Assembly seat named Thiruvananthapuram, one of the seven constitu­encies that fall under the Lok Sabha constituency. Apart from Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s good show in the 2024 General Elec­tion against Tharoor, securing a bigger vote share than in 2019 when Kummanam Rajasekharan came second against Tharoor, O Rajagopal had finished in the second slot, becoming the nearest rival to Tharoor in 2014.

Since 1984, when Kerala Varma Raja contested as the Hindu Munnani candidate, the fortunes of the Hindutva forces have seen a gradual rise, despite occasional dips in vote share, in the Lok Sabha seat. Essentially, it was in the state capital that BJP saw a massive rise in electoral fortunes compared with others. Kerala Varma Rajasekharan secured a decent tally as a BJP candidate in 1998 too, signalling growth for the Hindu nationalist party in Kerala’s capital. O Rajagopal went on to increase the tally over the decades although the party has never won a single parliamentary seat in the state so far.

Of Kerala’s 140 Assembly seats, BJP has to date won only one. Despite its organisational prowess and the fact that RSS, the par­ty’s parent organisation, has been active since the early 1940s, around the time the Communist Party also launched its activities in the state, electoral strength has been grossly disproportionate. Since Modi came to power, there has been a deliberate effort to strengthen the party in the state and to win elections as it has done nationwide. As luck would have it, BJP’s vote share in Kerala has been on the rise since then, and so have its political activities. There have been some gains. In 2024, actor-politician Suresh Gopi won the Thrissur Lok Sabha seat, the party’s first parliamentary victory in Kerala. Then, last year, BJP formed the local government in the Thiruvananthapuram municipal corporation, which is seen as a symbolic urban breakthrough.

ANOTHER DISTRICT WHERE BJP sees rays of elec­toral hope is Palakkad in north Kerala. In the last three elections in the Palakkad Assembly seat, BJP has come second. BJP insiders say that Sobha Surendran has emerged as a formidable “force” here. Surendran secured more than 29 per cent of the votes polled in 2016. In the 2021 polls and the 2024 bypoll, BJP candidates emerged as runners-up, relegating the Left 

 to the third position. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) also made gains in the local body polls.

“Sobha Surendran has been forceful and combative and has been able to strike a chord with a large section of the people. The Congress candidate isn’t exactly a political opponent but an outsid­er. For the Left, though, the disadvantage is its decline in the seat,” says KR Warrier, a resident of Palakkad who notes that national political trends do have an impact in Kerala as well, and more remarkably in places like Palakkad and Thiruvananthapuram. However, there are also those among the voters who argue that there is excessive hype being generated around Sobha Surendran.

Notwithstanding such opinions, a senior CPM leader tells me that since Surendran is the only “politician” in the constituency, she could stand to gain—especially at a time when the constitu­ency, like many others in the state, is witnessing massive polarisa­tion along religious lines. “Palakkad is one of the most religiously polarised seats in the state, and therefore Surendran may benefit, because what we are seeing now is antithetical to Kerala’s ethos of multiculturalism,” he says.

Palakkad had seen long dominance in Parliament by CPM starting with late Chief Minister EK Nayanar in 1967 and the legendary AK Gopalan in 1971 and on several other occasions until recently. Former CPM MP NN Krishnadas, who had won four elections in a row, lost in the 2016 Palakkad Assembly poll, ending up third. Palakkad is one of the seven Assembly seats that fall in the Palakkad Lok Sabha constituency.

The Congress candidate here is Ramesh Pisharody, a stand-up comedian and TV show host, and the Left has fielded NMR Razak, a businessman and hotelier who emphasises his local creden­tials. His family runs NMR Biriyani outlets popular in Palakkad as Rawther Biriyani. While Congress alleges that the Left has fielded him to split non-BJP votes, CPM has hit back saying Congress has fielded “weak” candidates in Palakkad as well as in Kazhakkoot­tam to help BJP. The three parties have accused one another of entering into unholy political pacts.

Another of Kerala’s Assembly seats where BJP sees big hope is Manjeshwaram in Kasaragod district. It is here that former BJP state President K Surendran is trying his luck again after losing the 2021 polls by a whisker. He had won close to 38 per cent of the votes polled and lost by a margin of 845 votes. In 2016 too, Surendran managed to win close to 36 per cent of the votes polled and lost by a narrower margin of 89. Surendran had come second in 2011. BJP came second in 2006 and in the 2019 bypoll in the constituency. More importantly, late BJP veteran KG Marar had lost the 1991 state polls by a margin of 1,000 votes. Manjeshwaram, therefore, is a seat that holds greater historical significance for BJP.

VD Satheesan, Congress MLA and opposition leader in the state Assembly, meanwhile, has accused BJP and CPM of enter­ing into pacts in 10 seats, an allegation dismissed by both parties. Clearly, this time round, such charges fly in the face of common sense since both the Left and naturally BJP are looking to woo Hin­du voters at a time when the Left feels that propaganda launched by the Jamaat-e-Islami against CPM has alienated Muslim voters.

As campaigning intensifies in the scorching Kerala summer, none of the parties appears willing to pull its punches. For the Left, the election is an existential battle. For BJP, it is an opportunity for a breakthrough.