KOCHI: The eternal joke about the sorry state of affairs in Kerala BJP was that the Malayali RSS worker, when he gets into his 20s, attains political maturity and starts voting for the CPM or the Congress. Professional sceptics also used this logic to explain away the anomaly between the state’s powerful, pervasive RSS network and a BJP unit unable to win even a single assembly or Lok Sabha seat thus far.Amit Shah & Co turned that joke on the CPM and the Congress when they practically handed over the faction-ridden BJP unit in the state to the iron-clad RSS system almost a year ago. At the root of this move, which caused a lot of heartburn among the BJP’s countless “state leaders”, was party veteran O Rajagopal’s defeat to Shashi Tharoor by a whisker in the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency in 2014.The Kerala capital figured on a list that 11 Ashoka Road — the BJP’s headquarters in Delhi — compiled, which had 57 constituencies across the country where the party had lost for less than 15,000 votes. A dejected Rajagopal remarked as news came in that he had lost to Tharoor despite the Modi wave: “Kerala needs to rethink if it wants to constantly defy the mood of the country!” We would need to wait until May 19 to know what Kerala thinks, but soon after the parliamentary results, the BJP leadership had a rethink.



The RSS had the upper hand in the goings-on and Kummanam Rajasekharan, a hardline Hindutva leader with a spotless reputation, was brought in as state BJP president. At the core of Kummanam’s strategy is to fade this red bastion into saffron, beginning with the southern tip: Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital, where veteran Rajagopal slipped thrice between the cup and the lip.

Thiruvananthapuram — or Trivandrum, as it is still referred to — always had a soft corner for soft Hindutva because of historical rather than religious reasons. The erstwhile capital of Travancore kingdom — whose King Marthanda Varma defeated the Dutch Navy in the Battle of Colachel in 1741 in one of the less celebrated chapters of Indian freedom struggle — has built its life more or less around the Sree Padmanabha Swamy temple, which became world-famous a few years ago after treasure worth Rs 1 lakh crore was discovered in its cellars. The Old Fort area surrounding the temple has been the RSS bastion for decades in Kerala.Historian MG Sasibhooshan points out that Thiruvananthapuram always had a vote bank in its Tamil- and Tulu-speaking Brahmin population (who were brought in by the kings for the Padmanabha Swamy temple) and the Nair Brigade (the native infantry that drew its cadre from the eponymous upper-caste community). In the 1960s and ’70s, the meetings of the RSS-Jan Sangh used to be held in the Devaswom Board hall in the city. Sasibhooshan says the RSS attained critical mass in Thiruvananthapuram after the Chala Market riots in the 1980s that began as a clash between Hindu and Muslim traders.

Although the BJP has never really come close to winning any of the assembly constituencies in the capital city, it has always been a factor. In Nemom constituency, along the National Highway 47 that leads to Kanyakumari coast, the party has come tantalisingly close a few times.



However, Rajagopal’s numerous forays in Lok Sabha polls have boosted the confidence of the cadre that Thiruvananthapuram will pull through if they push it enough.



And then came the recent panchayat polls where the BJP swept parts of the city, becoming the principal Opposition in the Left-ruled Thiruvananthapuram City Corporation, elbowing out the Congress.

Ergo, this time around, the BJP bombardment begins from the state capital. The top three leaders of the party are contesting from the capital, as per the initial list released by the state unit (See The Right Plan).The BJP won Round 1 of its campaign when it convinced its most respected leader in the state, the 86-year-old Rajagopal, to contest this time too. Rajagopal, who was minister of state for railways in the AB Vajpayee cabinet (he was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh), will contest from Nemom, which is considered as the safest seat for the BJP in Kerala. “I did not want to contest this time. But party colleagues said my withdrawal in a crucial election like this will be wrongly interpreted. So finally I agreed,” he told ET Magazine.“The presence of a leader like Rajagopal will send out positive energy to the rest of the district,” said VV Rajesh, another BJP leader. He believes it will help all the candidates in the district. Rajagopal himself sees the popularity index of a leader as a combination of three factors: the choice of the candidate, the effectiveness of the campaign and the appeal of the party.He also said that senior leaders were given seats in Thiruvananthapuram after a lot of discussions. Other leaders also said that the Thiruvananthapuram strategy of the party is not a blind bet on the hope that Rajagopal’s candidature will create a ripple effect.Said Rajesh, referring to former BJP state chief PK Krishnadas’s contesting from Kattakkada constituency in the capital: “Though Krishnadas had once lost in Kattakkada, he has been nursing the constituency well.” According to him, V Muraleedharan, who preceded Kummanam as BJP president, has already started work in Kazhakkoottam, the constituency in Thiruvananthapuram from where he is contesting. Only state president Kummanam, who is contesting from Vattiyoorkavu, is new to the electoral politics of the state capital. “But he is the state president. It is better for him to be in Thiruvananthapuram where the party has its headquarters,” Rajesh explained.Starting from Manjeswaram along the Kerala-Karnataka border to Thiruvananthapuram that touches the border with Tamil Nadu, the party has tried to distribute its senior leaders well. Though the candidate list is not finalised — an initial list of 22 candidates, including all top leaders was announced in Thiruvananthapuram, but that is subject to the final seal of Amit Shah — the party seems to be betting heavily on its pockets of strength, with Thiruvananthapuram as the crown.While political observers say the best-case scenario for the party is Nemom plus one or two seats, Kummanam says he is aiming at 70-plus seats needed to win a simple majority in the assembly. Muraleedharan dismissed the sceptics and told ET Magazine that Kummanam’s target is not unrealistic. “For each seat this time, we considered the ideal candidate,” said Muraleedharan. The BJP is fighting the election in alliance with the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), a new party floated by Vellappally Natesan, who heads a powerful, caste-based organisation called the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam. Seat-sharing is also based on winnability, said Muraleedharan. “We are not sharing seats first and then finding a suitable person for the seat.”BDJS president and Natesan’s son Thushar Vellappally agreed. He said that in the discussions with the BJP, the ideal candidate for each seat was discussed. “If he/she is in the BDJS, the seat would be given to us. If he/she is in the BJP, the seat would go to the BJP,” he said. Following this principle, the BDJS would fight in 40-50 seats this time. The party list, containing the names of a few well-known persons, would be out in a week’s time, he said.The main campaign plank of the BJP and its allies would be the failure of the two fronts, namely the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in developing Kerala, said Vellappally Jr. The impact of the recession is high in Kerala where a fall in the prices of cash crops like rubber has affected the people. The slowdown in tourism sector, due to the closure of bars, has also affected the economy. “We need a Central package to come out of these troubles. Only a BJP-led front, with good relations with the Centre, can get such a package,” said Thushar.A major achievement of the BJP is that it could put together an alliance, a third front, consisting of the BDJS and the Kerala Congress led by PC Thomas. “A lot of people did not vote for us because we were a single party that cannot compete with the UDF and the LDF,” said Rajagopal, adding that the new BJPled front would solve that problem to a great extent.Kummanam & Co are dreaming big, but their opponents say the chances of the BJP scoring a seat even in Thiruvananthapuram are dismal. Many point to the fact that the saffron brigade often mistakes the sheer popularity of Rajagopal for the strength of the BJP. The party’s fortunes in the capital (see BJP’s Seesaw Performance in Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha Seat) bears testimony to this.A Congress leader argues that even Rajagopal’s popularity comes with riders. He points out that the BJP veteran came second in Nemom constituency in 2011 only because the UDF candidate was weak. “A Janata Dal candidate was fielded there in 2011. This time the picture will change, with the UDF fielding a good candidate,” he said, adding that the image of Kummanam as a hardcore RSS man might not go down well with the middle-class voters in Thiruvananthapuram.The BJP’s initial euphoria has been punctured in the last two days after reports came that the central leadership is not happy with the list of candidates that the state unit has prepared. The candidate list might therefore see some changes.Still, one thing is certain. The party has succeeded in starting a debate that the two time-tested alliances, LDF and UDF, has not contributed much for the state that is still dependent on the remittances from its sons and daughters living abroad.