Thrissur: With just hours left for Kerala to go to polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ran into a ‘cash-for-votes’ controversy in Palakkad, with a video purportedly showing the party’s candidate allegedly handing out cash to a voter through a party worker.
The video that surfaced Wednesday showed a woman in white clothes—suspected to be a BJP worker—allegedly handing over currency notes to an elderly woman from Palakkad’s Kannadi village. Shortly after, the woman in white heads to a line of cars parked on the road. One car is seen occupied by Sobha Surendran, the BJP candidate from Palakkad.
The cameraman, who recorded the events, is later seen confronting Surendran. She loses her cool on camera, argues and tries to snatch the phone away from the cameraman. She is also heard saying that she would slap the cameraman.
When approached by local TV channels, the elderly woman, who was seen with the money, initially claimed that she had asked for Rs 5,000 to purchase her medicines and that she had bought them. But, she changed her statement almost immediately, saying she only asked for the money but never received it. Her relatives, meanwhile, maintained that the money was already in her hands and that “the BJP worker” only extended a handshake.
Since then, Sobha Surendran has denied all allegations related to the video as “baseless”.
She said the video, which surfaced on silent campaign day, tried to attack her personally. Asked about the woman in white seen in the video, Surendran said that she only travelled with another woman functionary in her car, appearing to indicate that the woman in white was not with her, but not in so many words. She then asked mediapersons if they were sure the woman in white was not planted by the Congress.
Located in central Kerala, Palakkad witnessed one of the most intense election campaigns this year, with the BJP labelling the assembly constituency as ‘A-class’ in view of the roots it, along with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has established there.
In 2021, the BJP’s candidate, ‘Metroman’ E. Sreedharan, lost the assembly constituency to the now-MP of Vadakara, Congress’s Shafi Parambil, by a margin of just 3,859 votes. This year, the party fielded senior BJP leader Sobha Surendran against Congress candidate, actor Ramesh Pisharody, and the LDF-supported Independent candidate N. M. Razaq.
After Shafi won the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the assembly constituency came to be represented by MLA Rahul Mankootathil, who was expelled from the Congress late last year after multiple sexual abuse allegations surfaced against him. Sensing the opportunity amid this, the BJP had been conducting an intense campaign in the constituency, which even saw the attendance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi only a week ago.
About the video, Sobha Surendran said Wednesday, “People who realised that the BJP was going to win this election came with these allegations. I am not contesting for the first time. This is my 10th election, and in the nine elections [before this], you have seen me. When they realised that I was going to win my 10th, they made a script yesterday and sent the youths. Who are they? From where did they come?”
Congress MP Shafi Parambil said the BJP should understand that their ‘usual tactic in North India’ would not work in Palakkad and that Surendran should be disqualified.
“The party that is ruling the country is making the process of elections a joke. It’s ambitious to think that you can win by giving money. By this, the BJP has admitted that they can’t win in the right way. This is the constituency where the PM came directly, and now the candidate herself has admitted that it has created no impact,” Shafi Parambil said, adding that his party would formally file a complaint to the Election Commission of India.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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