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Post defeat in Palakkad bypoll, knives out within Kerala BJP

Nov 25, 2024 06:18 AM IST

Party spokesperson B Gopalakrishnan admitted that there were deep organisational lapses during the campaign

A day after the party faced a big defeat at the hands of the Congress-led UDF in the Palakkad assembly bypoll on Saturday, murmurs of discontent grew within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) particularly aimed at state president K Surendran.

BJP candidate C Krishnakumar
BJP candidate C Krishnakumar

On the eve of counting, Surendran had put up a Facebook post, in which he claimed that the BJP would not only win Palakkad, but that the UDF would also be pushed to the third position. However, when results came in by Saturday afternoon, UDF candidate Rahul Mamkootathil defeated BJP’s C Krishnakumar by 18,840 votes, the highest margin in the history of the constituency. LDF candidate P Sarin finished a close third.

A closer look at the results showed that Mamkootathil secured 58,389 votes, up from 54,079 votes in the 2021 assembly elections. At the same time, the BJP lost 10,671 votes — plunging from its best-ever performance of 50,220 votes in 2021 to 39,549 votes this time. In the 2021 elections, the BJP had fielded E Sreedharan — the acclaimed engineer behind several Metro and railway projects in the country — in Palakkad, who was instrumental in winning over support apart from the party’s traditional vote base.

The defeat by over 18,000 votes this time compared to just 3,859 votes in 2021 has sent alarm bells ringing within the BJP as it suffered a major dent in its vote bank in the areas under the Palakkad municipality, one of the two municipalities it governs in Kerala. In 2021 assembly elections, the party received 34,143 votes in the booths under the municipality. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, it slipped to 29,355 votes and further dipped to 27,197 votes this time, an overall loss of nearly 7,000 votes compared to 2021.

Following the defeat, several questions have been raised on the lapses of the party during the campaign, why it lost an important contest despite the state president camping in the constituency, the candidate selection as well as the alleged failure to respond to criticisms of the UDF and the LDF.

Party spokesperson B Gopalakrishnan admitted that there were deep organisational lapses during the campaign in Palakkad.

“We made some serious efforts to rectify the lapses. Like they say, there’s no point putting oil on the skin surface (when deeper issues exist). It is a reality that there were issues here,” he said during a TV debate on Saturday.

Sandeep Vachaspathi, the state BJP spokesperson, took a jibe at Surendran, who wrote in a Facebook post that the real political fight took place in Chelakkara bypoll, where the party was able to increase its votes by nearly 10,000 compared to the 2021 elections. “The Thrissur district committee, which led the campaign there, deserves all the credit,” he wrote, hinting that the party did very well despite Surendran not being active in Chelakkara.

“In Palakkad, all the issues raised were personal such as communalism, corruption, and defections. It has to be examined if the party failed in defending itself on such issues. Such a setback was not expected. It will be seriously examined how there was an erosion in our vote base despite the state president leading the campaign,” he wrote.

Surendran, who took over as the BJP chief in February 2020, has already finished one term. If the party had won the Palakkad bypoll, he would have been allowed by the central leadership to continue till the 2026 assembly elections, a party source said. In the backdrop of the defeat, the demand to get Surendran removed as the state chief raised by other factions in the state unit will strengthen, he added.

While the BJP won its first-ever Lok Sabha seat in the state this year — Thrissur — it still has no representation in the state assembly. It has two Union ministers of state from Kerala in the cabinet — Suresh Gopi and George Kurian.

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