Is Kerala chief minister and party supremo Pinarayi Vijayan triggering an internal protest vote? Kerala elections are often marked by small swings in votes leading to big changes in outcomes. So the Left getting only one seat in 2024 was not a rare occurrence. But what was significant this time was that the CPM’s citadels saw a depletion in votes and the BJP performing well in those places.
The UDF bagging 18 out of 20 seats was a surprise but what was shocking was actor-turned politician, Suresh Gopi entering parliament as BJP MP from Kerala. By Kerala standards, the 74,686 vote margin he scored was significant. Gopi scored nearly 38% of the total 4.12 lakh votes — again a staggering result. He led in all the assembly constituencies of his Lok Sabha constituency including those the LDF had won in 2021.
The first NDA victory from the state was in 2004 when PC Thomas, leader of the Kerala Congress who had launched his own political party, won from Moovattupuzha, a strong Christian belt of central Travancore. It was a bolt from the blue for both UDF and LDF that Christians of the state could vote for an NDA candidate. It took two decades for the NDA to wrest the second victory.
The NDA has increased its vote share in the state from 12.46 % in 2021 assembly elections to 19.18% (6.72% percentage points increase) in 2024 whereas the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) also has increased its vote share to 46.22% from 39.41% (6.81 percentage points increase). The LDF registered a dip of 10.65 percentage points.
What has set alarm bells ringing in CPM is the drain in votes in party citadels across the state. Known as party villages, even the social life in
these hamlets were controlled by CPM diktats. But in these Leftist havens, under the calm, a protest vote was gathering force.
At Parapram, a village in Kannur district, where the Communist Party of India, Kerala unit was formed long back in 1939, UDF and BJP increased its votes while CPM felt the pinch. The red bastions of North Malabar region including Onchiyam, Morazha, Kayyur and Karivellur, all party villages where CPM’s word was sacred, shifted their allegiance to the BJP as well as the UDF in the polls.
At Kasargod Lok Sabha seat which includes the CPM citadels of Kalyassery, Payyannur, Thrikkaripur and Uduma, BJP has registered a significant jump in votes. For the first time in history, BJP votes crossed the crucial 2 lakh mark here with its candidate bagging 2,19,558 votes.
Not only critics, even the CPM district leadership accepted a vote drain of 44,210 votes from party kitty. At Kalyassery, a known red-citadel, BJP votes increased to 17,688 votes from 9,854 (7834 votes increase) polled in 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Kalyassery is the home-turf of former Chief Minister of CPM late EK Nayanar.
At another CPM stronghold at Alappuzha where LDF won its lone seat in 2019, the front lost 63,513 votes. Moreover, the LDF candidate finished third in two assembly constituencies, Harippad and Kayamkulam, below NDA while in all legislative constituencies, UDF candidate KC Venugopal ensured steady lead all through the counting. LDF polled 8.75 percentage points fewer votes in the constituency compared to 2019.
The massive shift of votes from party kitty was not limited to any particular zone, but it was a pan Kerala phenomenon. North Kerala’s Kannur
district was no exception to the trend.
What has set alarm bells ringing in CPM is the drain in votes in party citadels across the state. Known as party villages, even the social life in these hamlets were controlled by CPM diktats
Though most of the party theoreticians including its state secretary MV Govindan refer to anti-incumbency factor, saying they had retained the one seat they received in 2019, the party spokespersons are at a loss of words regarding loss of votes in party villages.
The anti-incumbency factor and protest votes of angry cadre led to the defeats of CPM heavyweights — former health minister KK Shailaja in Vadakara, MV Jayarajan in Kannur, Elamaram Karim in Kozhikode, A Vijayaraghavan, Palakkad, and Thomas Isaac (Pathanamthitta). Out of the 140 assembly constituencies, UDF led in 110 assembly constituencies, LDF led in 19 whereas BJP came close at 11.
‘We defeated our party’
A rebel CPM social media platform in Kannur district displayed a statement on June 4 indicating the simmering discontent among party faithfuls against the authoritarian leadership. There is a widespread feeling across party circles that the party is fast becoming a corporate tool under the leadership of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who is the last word in the party on key issues.
There was a widespread feeling among cadres at the grassroots that if the present pro-corporate culture of the party leadership continued unchecked, in near future the party would become extinct in the state. The example of West Bengal is loud and clear. The CPM-led coalition ruled West Bengal continuously from 1977-2011. Even with a Congress alliance, CPM failed to win even a single seat in West Bengal in the Lok Sabha election this time. Unlike Bengal, here, each cadre is literate and well-informed and can make decisions and execute them on his own. There is a fear in the middle levels of the party that Bengal would repeat in Kerala, and that 2024 is an indication of things to come.
P A Muhammed Riyas, son-in-law of Pinarayi, has been portrayed as the second-in-command in the Kerala state cabinet. When the candidates were selected to contest in the 2021 elections, popular faces including Thomas Isaac, former education minister N Raveendranath and former PWD Minister G Sudhakaran, who had proved their mettle in previous LDF ministries, were sidelined citing the need to give space to young blood.
This apart, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan himself is himself facing charges of corruption as the company run by Veena Vijayan, his daughter, had allegedly received huge sums of money from another tainted company which is under the cloud for its dubious track record in the state.
The silencing of brave leaders who questioned the follies of the party leadership has only created more resentment. The brutal murder of TP Chandrasekharan who had floated a rebel outfit RMP posing a challenge to CPM in Onchiyam, a party citadel in Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency in North Kerala in Kozhikode district in 2012, is still a fresh scar among CPM cadres. The state police during the previous LDF regime had proved beyond doubt that the murder was orchestrated by CPM leaders and carried out by pro-CPM gangsters.
Chandrasekharan was a popular CPM leader with strong linkages at the grassroots across the Malabar region. Post murder, there has been a steady dip in the class and mass organizations of CPM in the region. KK Rema, wife of the slain leader, won from Vadakara legislative constituency in the 2021 elections and continues to be an ardent critic of Vijayan in the state assembly.
Just before the 2024 parliament elections, the Kerala high court confirmed the verdict of the sessions court awarding life imprisonment to the eight accused including three CPM leaders. This likely reminded the disgruntled party faithfuls who voted against former health minister KK Shailaja at Vadakara.
The dark business deals of CPM leaders with saffron powers in the state have been a matter of suppressed discussions in the party corridors for the last many years. Just before the parliament elections, on April 25, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee state resident K Sudhakaran had stirred up a hornet’s nest by saying CPM heavyweight EP Jayarajan who is also the LDF convener in the state was plotting to defect to the BJP. He was in touch with top BJP leadership, he alleged.
Later, BJP leader Sobha Surendran and TG Nandakumar, a controversial middleman who swings business deals, endorsed the allegation saying that EP Jayarajan had discussions with BJP leader Prakash Javadekar, the national in-charge of the party affairs in Kerala. Putting CPM in a tight spot, EP Jayarajan accepted that he had met the BJP leader at the home of his son in Thiruvananthapuram.
At Thrissur where actor Suresh Gopi had a landslide victory, it was the scam at the Karuvannur Co-operative Bank, which had turned the CPM applecart turtle. Initially, it was a ‘Rs 100 crore’ scam but later the amount involved increased many fold as it was revealed bank employees and CPM leaders had availed fraudulent loans
For his untimely revelations, Jayarajan faced public criticism from Vijayan, that too on the day of polling. But by that time the damage was done in the form of protest votes from CPM cadres. Many Muslim voters shifted to UDF as a result. On June 4, Pinarayi Vijayan would have been shocked to find that in his own booth at Dharmadam, BJP had doubled its votes from 53 in 2019 to 114 now.
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Co-operative bank scams
At Thrissur where actor Suresh Gopi had a landslide victory, it was the scam at the Karuvannur Co-operative Bank, which had turned the CPM applecart turtle. Initially, it was a ‘Rs 100 crore’ scam but later the amount involved increased many fold as it was revealed bank employees and CPM leaders had availed fraudulent loans.
The case was first handed over to the Crime Branch and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) also started probing into the scam. Apart from many local CPM leaders, ED questioned minister AC Moideen and PK Biju, MP. The co-operative banks in the state are controlled by CPM and scams have been reported in many of them. With a significant NRI population, It was not a secret that the unaccounted money of NRIs as well as businessmen of Thrissur have been dumped in co-operative banks. At Thrissur district alone, more than 75,000 depositors of four co-operative banks are in trouble as huge funds have been swindled by employees and board members, allegedly with the active connivance of CPM leadership.
Rather than a political shift, the victory of Suresh Gopi at Thrissur was a protest against the anarchy let loose in the cooperative sector by CPM. Even the Christian community, a traditional votebank of the Congress-led UDF, was miffed by the lukewarm attitude of Congress leaders in exposing CPM’s role in cooperative bank scams, with a section of them voting for Gopi.
Will BJP do a TMC?
In this election, BJP came first in 11 out of 140 constituencies in the state, second in nine constituencies and third in 10 assembly constituencies in nine Lok Sabha constituencies with a victory margin of less than 5,000 votes. BJP has performed much better than 2019 in 30 assembly constituencies.
A post-poll survey of Lokniti-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), released recently, attributes the increase in BJP’s vote share to the slight tilt in demographics. Close to a majority from among the Nairs (45 %) apparently voted for the BJP/NDA alliance. The survey also claims that a section of the powerful Ezhava community, the leading Hindu caste group in Kerala that traditionally supported LDF, has moved towards the BJP (32 %).
CPM supporters, however, confidently say that the Ezhava community will not align with the NDA as their caste principle set by the scholar Sree Narayana Guru was ‘One religion, One god and One Caste’. Even the Ezhava political party, Bharatiya Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), launched by Thushar Vellappalli, son of Vellappalli Natesan, the supremo of the SNDP (Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Sangham) founded by Guru himself, failed to garner the expected vote share in any of the Lok Sabha Constituencies it had fought as an NDA ally. Even the all-out support of Hindutva forces during the years failed to ensure the success of the alliance.
CPM intelligentsia says that the 2024 phenomenon is only temporary. They say a similar surge happened in 2019 too but in the 2021 polls that followed, the LDF bagged 98 of the 140 assembly constituencies. In 2026 the political combinations and situations would be different as the protest votes from CPM cadres and the vengeance mood of Christian voters in Thrissur may not be there for the BJP to benefit from.
