It turned out to be a black Monday for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Kerala as leaders came out in the open blaming each other for the crushing defeat suffered by the party candidate in the by-election held for the Palakkad Assembly constituency.

While Prameela Sasidharan, the municipal chairperson of the BJP ruled Palakkad Municipality, blamed the state leadership for fielding C Krishnakumar as the party candidate, K Surendran, the Hindutva party's state chief, claimed that all the party candidates did exceptionally well in the hustings, even though the votes polled by them did not show any increase.

"The candidates are selected and approved by the BJP high command and the state leaders have no role in the process," Surendran said, while speaking to reporters on Monday. He said there was no need for him to quit as the party chief though the party failed to poll even close to what E Sreedharan could manage in the 2021 Assembly election from Palakkad.

Former union minister V Muraledharan washed off his hands from the Palakkad drubbing by claiming that he was busy with Maharashtra Assembly Election which the BJP-led alliance won with ease. "You may have to ask Kerala BJP chief about the reasons for the poor performance of the party candidates in the by elections held at Wayanad (Lok Sabha), Palakkad and Chelakkara (Assembly constituencies)," said Muraleedharan.

There is widespread discontentment among the party's second rung leadership towards Surendran and Muraleedharan, according to Sasidharan. She said that despite their reservation over the fielding of Krishnakumar as a candidate from Palakkad, the entire party mechanism functioned like a well-oiled machine for his victory.

But Krishnakumar failed miserably to reach the 35.34 per cent votes, which was what Sreedharan bagged in 2021 Assembly election against Shafi Parambil of the Congress. Krishnakumar could poll just 28.63 per cent of the popular votes despite the high voltage campaign.

Adding insult to injury was Prakash Javadekar, the in-charge of the Kerala affairs of the party. "The BJP will win many more seats in the 2026 Assembly election including Palakkad. We have done good work in the poll," said Javadekar. Interestingly, Javadekar had claimed during the run up to the Parliament election that he would see to it that the BJP wins a minimum of six seats from Kerala.  

Kerala's political chronicler, P Sujathan, says that since the present leaders have proved their all round incompetence, the BJP high command should launch a mission to find out and appoint new leadership. "The BJP leadership in the state is a blot on the people who are badly in need of a change from the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the United Democratic Front (UDF). Both Surendran and Muraleedharan should be removed at the earliest to save the BJP," said Sujathan.