It was a moment of pride and celebration for BJP when the lotus bloomed in God’s Own Country on Thursday for the first time in history. This has ended many decades’ long electoral drought, as senior party leader and former Union Minister O Rajagopal was declared elected to the Kerala Assembly from the Nemom constituency in Thiruvananthapuram by a margin of 8,671 votes.
That is not the only good news that had come out of the Assembly election results on Thursday for the BJP and the NDA it leads. BJP candidates claimed second position in seven seats, augmenting the party’s confidence of improving its position to work towards achieving power. The party has also immensely improved its vote share across Kerala.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had addressed a high-voltage election rally on May 11 in Thiruvananthapuram, congratulated the BJP workers of Kerala for brilliant performance in the State election. “I salute all those who built the BJP in Kerala, brick by brick, decade after decade. It is due to them we are seeing this day,” he said in a tweet.
“Just the other day, (Congress leader) AK Antony had said that the BJP cannot ever enter the State Assembly and that if it had to, it would have to take the visitor’s pass. My victory in Nemom is the reply to the arrogance of Antony and others like him,” said Rajagopal after the news of his victory over his closest rival V Sivankutty of the CPI(M) came.
Rajagopal, who has fought many elections for the BJP in the State in the past and lost them all, some by just a whisker as it had happened in the 2014 lok Sabha polls in Thiruvananthapuram against Congress’s Shashi Tharoor, had maintained steady lead over Sivankutty throughout the counting of votes on Thursday.
“The Congress and the communists can now find relief arguing that the BJP has opened account in the Assembly with just one seat after their high-voltage campaign in which even the Prime Minister participated in a big way. let them. But the fact is that we have made the start and it gives us the energy to strengthen our efforts,” said a Yuva Morcha leader in Kochi.
According to poll-watchers, all the seven BJP candidates who came second in their seats had conceded defeat only after giving tough fight to their rivals. State BJP general secretary K Surendran lost the Manjeswaram seat, where he had stood second in the 2011 polls as well, to his UDF rival by just 89 votes after leading there for over three-fourth of the duration of counting.
“It is a clear case of the CPI(M) transferring its votes to the UDF when it was convinced that the BJP would win in the seat. They have been doing this always. It is part of the adjustment politics between the left and the (Congress-led) UDF,” said Surendran. Recounting was ordered in the Manjeswaram constituency as per the BJP’s demand.
Among those who came second in this election were State BJP president Kummanam Rajasekharan (Vattiyurkkavu), former State party chief V Muraleedharan (Kazhakkoottam), both in Thiruvananthapuram district, general secretary Sobha Surendran (Palakkad) and C Krishnakumar in the Malampuzha seat which VS Achuthanandan won.