The Kerala BJP is expecting NDA’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s visit to Kerala on Sunday to participate in a party rally and a Dalit meet and to hold discussions with various Christian church heads may work wonders for it in the lok Sabha election and in the efforts to broad-base the party in God’s Own Country.
Modi had visited Kerala twice since April last year but this will be his first political visit to the State. In April last, he had participated in a spiritual conclave organised by the Sivagiri Mutt at Varkala in Thiruvananthapuram. In September, he had visited Vallikkavu, Kollam to participate in the birthday celebrations of Mata Amritanandamayi.
The Kerala BJP is upbeat about the visit as it is happening just when the party is riding a wave nationally on the wings of Modi’s popularity ahead of the lok Sabha election. This has given a new confidence to the State party unit, as it is kick-starting the poll campaign with this visit, to hope for making the lotus bloom in a major election in Kerala for the first time in history.
The rally Modi is attending is being held in Thiruvananthapuram, which is also the lok Sabha constituency where the BJP’s poll prospects are the brightest in the State. Senior leader and former Union minister O Rajagopal, who had in 2004 bagged almost 30 percent votes when the winner had got only 37 percent votes from this seat, is the party candidate here this time also.
The BJP is yet to draw up its list of candidates for the 20 lok Sabha seats in the State and this exercise would be completed soon, sources say. The party hopes to raise its vote percentage in the State in the lok Sabha election considerably this time in the context of the Modi wave. The party’s vote share in Kerala had plummeted to 6.31 percent in 2009 from 10.39 percent in 2004.
Arrangements for Modi’s rally on the Shankhummukham beach in Thiruvananthapuram, in which about five lakh party workers from all over the State are expected to take part, have already been completed, according to organisers. One of the biggest attractions at the rally grounds at Shankhummukham will be the several NaMo tea stalls.
The State BJP thinks that there is every possibility for Modi to create great enthusiasm among the electorate in favour of the party and that this could translate into pro-BJP votes in the election. “It need not be impossible for the party to win Thiruvananthapuram amidst this Modi wave if Rajagopal could bag 30 per cent votes in 2004,” said a top State BJP functionary.
Thiruvananthapuram city has already been decked up with over 3,000 banners and boards and over 100,000 party flags to welcome the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate. “We are sure that this public meeting would be known as an unprecedented event in political Kerala’s history in terms of attendance as well as impact,” said the BJP leader.
Modi, who is arriving in Kochi by 1.30 pm on Sunday, will at 3.30 pm inaugurate a Dalit meet being organized by the Kerala Pulayar Maha Sabha (KPMS) to commemorate the historic Kayal Sammelanam of 1913 held on a platform built over several country boats berthed in the Kochi backwaters to assert the backward Pulaya community’s rights in the then Kerala society.
While the BJP hopes that the meet and participation of Modi, himself a backward community man, in it would help it make inroads into the Dalit and other backward communities, the KPMS thinks that his presence would give the Dalits, who have never been taken seriously by the Congress or the Communists, a new hope and direction.
Modi is also expected to meet the heads of various Christian churches — Roma Catholic, Orthodox Syrian, Chaldean Syrian and latin Catholic churches — and discuss with them the problems they are facing in Kerala. Heads of some of these churches have been full of praise for Modi for the development he had brought into Gujarat and his governance record.