Thiruvananthapuram: The Congress was leading in six out of seven Assembly constituencies in party general secretary K. C. Venugopal’s Alappuzha Lok Sabha constituency.
Venugopal’s home turf Alappuzha includes Aroor, Cherthala, Alappuzha, Haripad, Kayamkulam, Karunagappally and Ambalappuzha.
The Congress-led UDF was leading in all except Cherthala.
This year, the Congress-backed UDF did not field a candidate in Ambalappuzha; instead it backed former CPI(M) minister G. Sudhakaran against CPI(M) candidate H. Salam.
Sudhakaran was leading despite CPI(M) using all of its organisational strength, including campaigning by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
In Haripad, senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala was leading over CPI’s J. J. Jismon; Shanimol Usman was leading against CPI(M)’s Daleema in Aroor; in Alappuzha, A.D. Thomas was ahead of P.P. Chitharanjan; in Kayamkulam, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committe (KPCC) functionary M Liju was leading against U. Prathibha; and in Karunagappally, C.R. Mahesh was leading against M.S. Thara.
The only Left candidate leading was CPI’s P. Prasad, up against Congress’s K.R. Rajendra Prasad, in Cherthala.
Alappuzha, a region with strong presence of trade unions, was considered a strong Left bastion. It witnessed multiple struggles in the past, including the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising. But more recently, the region saw a gradual rise in BJP-led NDA presence in certain pockets.
Of the seven Assembly segments, LDF had won five in the 2021 Assembly polls. The two it had lost were Chennithala’s Harippad constituency and Karunagappally.
Venugopal has significant influence in Alappuzha. From Kerala’s Kannur district, Venugopal entered politics through Congress-linked student unions like the Kerala Students Union (KSU) and later became state president of the Indian Youth Congress. He was elected to the Kerala Legislative Assembly from Alappuzha constituency in 1996, 2001 and 2006. He was elected Minister for Devaswom and Tourism in 2004-06 under Oommen Chandy.
He contested the Lok Sabha polls from Alappuzha in 2009 and 2014. During this time, he was appointed Union Minister under the Manmohan Singh government for a brief period. He was nominated from Rajasthan as a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha in June 2020.
This period also saw the gradual rise of the leader in Congress’s national leadership, when he was appointed the 2018 Assembly elections in-charge of Karnataka, a state that the party went on to win from. In 2019, he became AICC General Secretary (Organisation).
Venugopal came back to Kerala in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, winning from Alappuzha by a margin of over 60,000 votes. After this, the leader has been involving himself more in Kerala’s organisational matters and decisions, and has been active here, resulting in the perception that he is vying for the chief minister’s post.
The leader has also been active in election strategy and campaign in 2026, travelling across multiple constituencies in the state. Soon after the polls, a section of Congress leaders and KPCC functionaries came out openly and extended support to the leader, saying that his leadership was necessary for the state.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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