Thiruvananthapuram: For all the tall hopes of the Bharatiya Janata Party across India in the Lok Sabha elections this year, there is one corner of the country where it would be delighted to pick up just one seat: Kerala.
The BJP is yet to win a single assembly or Lok Sabha seat in the state, and as always it is hoping that the elusive win would happen this time. To give the party’s hopes one final push, none less than BJP’s prime minister candidate, Narendra Modi is visiting Kerala on a campaign call on Tuesday.
He is expected to speak in the Kasaragod constituency which is high on the list of hopeful constituencies for the BJP, where its senior leader and former state president K. Surendran is contesting.
Two other constituencies where BJP is hopeful are Thiruvananthapuram, where veteran leader O. Rajagopal is pitted in a three-cornered contest against Congressman Shashi Tharoor and CPI’s Bennet Abraham, and Pathanamthitta where T. Ramesh is contesting against sitting Congress MP, Anto Antony.
The importance BJP is placing on Kerala this time is evident from the fact that Modi has visited the state thrice in the last six months. On one of those trips he addressed a meeting at the Sivagiri Mutt at Varkala that belongs to the Sree Narayana Dharma Sangham Trust.
BJP state president V. Muraleedharan is hopeful that the party will break its electoral jinx in Kerala, riding on the “10-year misrule of the United Progressive Alliance government”.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha poll the party garnered over 6 per cent of votes in the state. The BJP is hopeful that if there is a significant swing for the party in Thiruvananthapuram, Pathanamthitta or Kasaragod it can win its first Lok Sabha seat from Kerala. That hope is also based on the fact that the party won over 900 seats in various local bodies in the state in 2010.
