Kottayam: A.K. Antony represents a political outfit completely cut off from India’s socio-political and cultural realities, said his son and BJP’s Pathanamthitta candidate—Anil K. Antony—in an attack on the Congress.
“Personally, he is someone I have the biggest and highest respect for. I do sincerely,” said Anil. However, he added, people have constantly rejected the Congress.
In an interview with ThePrint, Anil, who is gearing up for his debut elections, said, “In the last two general elections, they didn’t even have enough numbers to have a leader of opposition. Once, it was a party that used to have 400-plus seats; now, you have one-tenth of (those) seats.”
More and more people are leaving the Congress because it’s cut off from reality, reiterated the BJP candidate.
Former defence minister and Kerala chief minister A.K. Antony is one of the Congress veterans recognised as a strong critic of the BJP-led Central government. A.K. Antony has already said his son should not win as a BJP candidate from Pathanamthitta, endorsing Congress candidate and sitting MP Anto Antony.
Anil, the former national coordinator and convenor of All Indian Congress Committee (AICC) social media and digital communications, joined the BJP in April 2023, two months after he quit the Congress.
In this Lok Sabha polls, Anil will contest from Pathanamthitta, considered one of the BJP’s “A-class” seats in Kerala since the party managed to win nearly 30% of the votes from the constitueny in the last elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Anil’s campaign on March 15, a day before the election commission announced the poll dates.
The BJP candidate, however, is not seeing his first election as a challenge. “Everybody has to fight their first election sometime. That is part of the process,” said Anil, adding he has been used to a political atmosphere since childhood.
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‘LDF, UDF follow same politics of minority appeasement’
Fielded from the heartland of the 2008 Sabarimala protests, which ended in the Supreme Court ending an 18-year-old restriction on women of menstrual age from entering the shrine, Anil will face off with two seasoned politicians in his maiden electoral battle.
While the Left Democratic Front (LDF) has fielded senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader and former Kerala finance minister Thomas Isaac, United Democratic Front (UDF) has fielded three-time MP Anto Antony from the party bastion again.
However, Anil said he is confident of a victory, claiming that the LDF and UDF, part of the INDIA bloc, follow the “same politics of extreme appeasement of certain minorities”.
The BJP leader alleged that both parties are engaged in vote bank politics and have disregarded the sentiments of the majority.
“We (BJP) are for everybody. We are for 140 crore people. We want to ensure that we move forward to become a developed country. But we do follow the route of law,” he said.
“The Congress left because of their appeasement politics—they started treating the majority… they started disregarding. Let’s say the sentiment of the majority is not their concern. All their politics revolve around appeasing certain minorities—that’s vote bank politics. It’s not something that we encourage,” he added.
Anil said Kerala is seeing a rise in radical ideas, and it is in the BJP’s and country’s best interests to ensure these do not ruin the state.
The BJP leader has made claims about Kerala’s radicalism earlier as well, and Kerala Police have booked him in some of these instances.
In October 2023, the Kasaragod district cyber cell booked Anil over a social media post, showing a video of Muslim students arguing with other women, with the caption “no bus rides without a burqa in northern Kerala”. Later, it was revealed the students were angry as the bus did not stop where they wanted to get out. Anil has since deleted his post.
Two months later, the leader was again booked for promoting enmity and spreading misinformation about the blasts that killed three at the international convention centre in Kochi’s Kalamassery.
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‘BJP is not trying to reach out to particular community’
Located in the southern part of Kerala, the Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha seat has never voted for any other political party but the UDF since 2009, the year of the formation of the constituency.
The constituency comprises five assembly segments, Thiruvalla, Ranni, Aranmula, Konni, and Adoor, in the Pathanamthitta district and two Kanjirappally and Poonjar in neighbouring Kottayam district.
Congress’s Anto Antony won the seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with 380,927 votes, followed by CPI(M)’s Veena George with 3,36,684 votes. BJP chief K. Surendran, the BJP’s face of the Sabarimala protests, won 2,97,396 votes—a 28.97 percent share. Surendran has moved to Wayanad to contest against Rahul Gandhi and the Communist Party of India’s Annie Raja this election.
Kottayam district has a 49.81 percent Hindu population, followed by 43.48 percent Christians and 6.41 percent Muslims, and Pathanamthitta has 56.28 percent Hindus, 39.03 percent Christians, and 4.58 percent Muslims, according to the 2011 Census.
Anil might help the BJP win over Christian voters in the constituency.
Anil, however, told ThePrint, “BJP is not trying to reach out to any one community or any particular community. We are trying to reach out to every single Indian.”
The opposition parties have created a narrative about the BJP being anti-Christian, but the party is in power in many states like Goa, which has the highest number of Christian voters, Anil said.
Kerala is the “aberration and exception”, but the ground reality is changing slowly, added Anil.
“Yesterday, the Believers (Eastern) Church supported us (Anil in Pathanamthitta). Publically, this is the first time the church supported a BJP candidate. This is a start. Over time, more and more churches will support us,” he said.
This is the first time in Kerala’s history that a church body has extended support to a BJP candidate.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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