Thiruvananthapuram: The BJP is projecting its capture of Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation as a turning point for the party in Kerala, where it won its first Lok Sabha seat in the general election last year. But a closer look at the results of recently concluded local body polls indicate that the BJP’s footprint in Kerala largely remains unchanged.
Data shows it hasn’t made any major gains compared to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, including in Christian belts where it was hoping to consolidate support.
The local body polls, held months ahead of the assembly polls, saw the BJP-led NDA win 26 village panchayats, up from seven in 2020, and secure control of two municipalities, Palakkad and Ernakulam’s Tripunithura, in addition to the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation.
While it retained control of the Palakkad municipality for a third consecutive term and wrested Tripunithura from the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF), it also lost control of Pandalam municipality to the Left. Overall, the NDA won 1,447 of the state’s 17,337 wards.
In 2020, when local body polls were last held in the state, Kerala had 15,962 grama panchayat wards before delimitation.
As for the BJP, it has been trying to make an electoral breakthrough in Kerala. It now has two Union ministers from the state where it won its first-ever Lok Sabha seat in 2024.
The NDA’s vote share in the local body polls stood at around 16 percent, largely in line with its 15.64 percent share in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. In the 2021 assembly polls, the NDA’s vote share was 12.41 percent.
A senior BJP leader and state committee member told ThePrint that while capturing Thiruvananthapuram was a major achievement, it had yet to translate into a broader expansion of the party’s vote base. “Christian outreach hasn’t happened at all,” the leader said, adding that it would take time for younger faces such as state committee members Shone George and Anoop Antony Joseph to gain acceptance among the electorate.
The leader, who requested anonymity, said sections of the Catholic Church do not support BJP leader P.C. George, whose son, Shone George, is leading the party’s outreach aimed at the Christian community.
According to him, the outreach was complicated by reports of attacks on Christian priests in other states, as well as a controversial speech by P.C. George in Kottayam’s Thidanadu, where he allegedly threatened a local priest who did not support the BJP.
“When we stayed as BJP leaders, they voted for us. People vote for a real approach,” said the leader quoted earlier. He added that the party could make a breakthrough in the assembly polls if it learns from the results of these local body polls.
Shone George told ThePrint that while the party’s overall vote share had not seen a major jump, there was a marginal increase in the number of BJP councillors across the state. “People saw UDF as the alternative amid strong anti-incumbency. But we have to convince them that both fronts are part of INDIA bloc before the assembly polls,” he said.
While the Congress and CPI(M) are traditional rivals in Kerala, they are part of the larger INDIA bloc outside the state.
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‘Christian leadership at local level’
According to the 2011 Census, Hindus make up 54.73 percent of Kerala’s population, followed by Muslims at 26.56 percent and Christians at 18.38 percent.
As the BJP struggles to establish itself in the state, it has increasingly looked at the Christian vote bank, especially since Hindu votes are largely split between the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF).
In 2023, the BJP launched its Sneha Yatra outreach programme, focusing on festivals such as Christmas and Easter. Senior leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also made multiple visits to Church leaders in Kerala.
These efforts yielded gains, with the party securing around five percent of the Christian vote in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, according to the CSDS post-poll survey.
This voting pattern contributed to the BJP’s maiden Lok Sabha victory in Thrissur, a constituency with a sizeable Christian population.
The party has also elevated leaders from the Christian community to key positions, including the induction of George Kurian as a minister of state in the NDA government in 2024.
On 12 July, following a leadership revamp under newly appointed state BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the party appointed three Christians, namely Shone George, Anoop Antony Joseph, and Jiji Joseph to its state committee. The outreach push, however, faced a setback following the arrest of two Catholic nuns in Chhattisgarh in July on charges of human trafficking and forced conversions.
While the BJP’s Kerala unit publicly supported the nuns, its Chhattisgarh unit defended the arrests, putting the party in a politically delicate position.
Soon after, the party launched a door-to-door campaign targeting Christian households at the local body level, aimed at explaining its ideology and countering what it described as “misinformation spread by the Congress”. Party leaders, including Shone George, who was directly overseeing the outreach, also stepped up visits to Church leaders.
Despite these efforts and gains made in Thiruvananthapuram and Tripunithura, the 2025 local body poll results show little change on the ground.
In Thrissur district, where BJP leader Suresh Gopi won the Lok Sabha seat, the party secured just one village panchayat, Thiruvilwamala, in the Alathur Lok Sabha constituency. In contrast, the LDF won 44 grama panchayats and the UDF won 34 in this district.
The UDF also retained the Thrissur Municipal Corporation, which the BJP aggressively targeted, along with the two municipalities in the district. Of the 16 block panchayats, LDF won 10, UDF five, and one ended in a tie. The Thrissur district panchayat went to the LDF.
In neighbouring Ernakulam district, the NDA won one municipality and failed to secure any village or block panchayats. The UDF won the Kochi Municipal Corporation and also 67 of the 82 village panchayats in this district.
In Kottayam, one of the major Christian belts in the state, NDA won three of the 71 village panchayats, while drawing a blank in municipalities and block panchayats.
Shone, however, claimed the BJP had made organisational gains within the Christian community. “We never had Christian faces in the state earlier. This time, we were able to field thousands of Christian candidates and build Christian leadership at the local level. This will take time to convert into winning candidates, as many of them are new faces,” he said.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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