Thiruvananthapuram: It stands apart as the only south Indian state which did not send a BJP member to the Lok Sabha.
Kerala, the state located between Dakshina Kannada in Karnataka and Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, two bastions of the BJP in the south, has always evaded the saffron wave, though the NDA’s PC Thomas could manage a seat in 2004 by a margin of about 500 votes, the result was however overturned by the SC on grounds that he had made religious and communal appeal to voters.
However, the party, this time, is leaving no stone unturned to grab a couple of seats from the state which hosts bipolar politics in its highest degree.
The two trips by PM Narendra Modi to the state in a gap of 10 days illustrates this more vividly.
According to party insiders, the churning after the SC verdict allowing women under the age of 50 into the Sabarimala hill shrine has created a conducive atmosphere for the party to fulfil its long-cherished dream.
“Unlike media projections, the party aims at giving a strong fight in all the 20 seats. There are several reasons for this. Primarily, the party aims to focus on 2021 when the state faces an assembly election. Moreover, there is the three-tier local body election in 2020. If we do well well in a seat where we are not strong, that will get reflected in the next two. The next three years are election driven and the 2019 fight is a prequel to the next two,” a party insider told News18.
According to him, earlier, the focus of the party was confined to a few seats for mainly two reasons — lack of funds and workers.
“Now the situation has changed. We don't have to depend on workers from one constituency to work in another. Almost all the seats are self-sufficient in terms of spirited workers who can devote their energy,” he said.
The BJP, which could win barely a seat in 2016 and emerge runners-up in seven others, including a close 89-vote loss at the northern tip of the state, Manjeswaram, plans are afoot to repeat the same feat in 2019 with doubling the vote share in at least 50 assembly constituencies coming under the 12 Lok Sabha seats.
Apart from Thiruvananthapuram, where they lost by a margin of 15,470 votes in 2014, the BJP believes in putting up a strong triangular fight in Attingal, Mavelikkara, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Idukki, Kottayam, Alappuzha, Thrissur, Palakkad, Kozhikode and Kasaragod.
With a five-fold rise in vote share in many places, especially in the southern part of the state, the party leadership is feeling confident.
For instance, in Attingal (SC) constituency, it got 4,844 votes in the 2011 assembly election. However, an outsider woman candidate upped the tally to 27,602 in 2016.
However, political observers are in no mood to acknowledge the claims of BJP.
“It is true that there is a visible shift in the mindset of Kerala voters after the Sabarimala crisis. However, we can't predict on which side it will move. The winning capability of a candidate is a crucial factor which influences the result. Unfortunately, the state BJP is facing a dearth of candidates who can support themselves to emerge as a winner in the general election,” said Jacob George, an analyst.
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