Bengaluru: The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) trounced the Left by winning 19 of Kerala’s 20 seats as results of elections 2019 came in Thursday.
The only seat in which the UDF was trailing as of Thursday evening was Alappuzha, the constituency of AICC general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal, a close aide of party president Rahul Gandhi.
The ruling party in Kerala lost out on various fronts, but the major damage was done during the Sabarimala agitation, with the Pinarayi Vijayan administration throwing its weight behind the Supreme Court order to allow women of the menstruating age inside the temple’s sanctum sanctorum.
To get the latest live updates on the Lok Sabha elections, click here
The UDF steered clear of the controversial religious issue during the campaign and adopted a straightforward strategy where they targeted the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government and their “failures”. They also gained in areas where the public’s hurt over the LDF’s Sabarimala stand was particularly intense, namely Thrissur, Pathanamthitta and Thriuvanathapuram. Alappuzha was also among the epicentres of the Sabarimala stir.
BJP’s Kerala dreams don’t see light of day
The Lok Sabha election in Kerala was driven by two major issues, the Sabarimala controversy and the floods that ravaged the state in 2018.
The BJP has never won a seat from the state. However, in light of the BJP’s fervent support to the agitations against the Supreme Court order, it was expected to win some of the nerve centres of the stir, such as Pathanamthitta, where the shrine is located, or Thiruvananthapuram.
Shashi Tharoor of the Congress, the two-term Lok Sabha representative for the Kerala capital, successfully managed to win another term from Thiruvananthapuram, where the BJP’s Kummanam Rajasekharan was over one lakh votes behind him.
In an interview with ThePrint ahead of polling in Thiruvananthapuram, Tharoor had said he expected his voteshare to take a hit on account of the BJP’s campaign against an extract from his 1989 fiction book, The Great Indian Novel, which they claimed was derogatory to Nair women.
However, the victory margin for Tharoor, a Nair himself, has gone up from the slim 14,500 that landed him his second Lok Sabha stint.
While the Congress had initially been quiet about women’s entry to Sabarimala, it had subsequently allied with the protests against the Supreme Court order. The subject was also dealt with in a viral opinion piece Tharoor wrote for ThePrint.
Soon after winning the seat, Tharoor took to social media. “As my lead nears 50,000 with 72% counted, I feel like a batsman who has scored a century while his team has lost! It’s a bittersweet emotion I will take some time to reflect on,” he tweeted.
The BJP’s Pathanamthitta candidate, K. Surendran, had entered the campaign fray amid comparisons with L.K. Advani — arrested during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in 1990 — for spending 23 days in jail during the Sabarimala stir. He was also booked in nearly 200 cases, all related to the violence that erupted across the constituency during the Sabarimala protests. When he came out on bail, he was given a hero’s welcome and made to look like the saviour of Hinduism in Kerala.
However, he lost the election to the Congress’ Anto Antony.
Also read:Nair pride political gimmick for BJP-RSS but a deeply personal issue for me: Shashi Tharoor
COMMENTS