The Palakkad debacle of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was a story of so near yet so far: After steadily gaining ground over the past decade in the town, the party suddenly lost ground in the November 2024 Assembly byelection. Congress-led United Democratic Front’s (UDF’s) Rahul Mamkootathil defeated BJP’s C. Krishnakumar, by 18,724 votes on November 23, setting a record victory margin in Palakkad and dealing a blow to the BJP’s expansion plans in Kerala.
Leaders in the Kerala unit of the BJP are worried, and some want a leadership change. A few claimed that it was the wrong candidate choice that led to the defeat. In the 2021 Assembly election, the party had put up a stupendous show and fell short of the victory margin by less than 5,000 votes.
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This season, the BJP had several factors working in its favour: The RSS held its national convention (Samanway Baithak) in Palakkad in August; national and State leaders joined the campaign in force; the Congress was disturbed by infighting; and the ruling LDF faced anti-incumbency. After all, the party had won the town’s municipality and was growing from strength to strength in the town.
“The RSS had a presence in Palakkad from the 1950s,” Prakash Karat, CPI(M)‘s interim coordinator, told Frontline. “From then, they have been working steadily in many areas in the city. As a result, the BJP even managed to win the municipal elections,” added Karat, who hails from Palakkad.
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat (left) and general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale at the national coordination conclave of RSS at Palakkad on August 31, 2024. The BJP’s traditional campaign strategies failed to work as their candidate trailed behind both the winning Congress candidate Rahul Mamkootathil and the Left Front’s P. Sarin. | Photo Credit: The Hindu
A look at the numbers from the past decade showcases the BJP’s rise. In 2016, the BJP garnered just over 40,000 votes, up from just over 22,000 it had managed in the 2011 Assembly election. The party surpassed all expectations after it fielded “Metro Man” E. Sreedharan in the 2021 Assembly election and got over 50,000 votes.
But the party’s vote share dropped by around 7,000 in the 2024 Lok Sabha election compared to the 2021 Assembly election. Despite this decline, the State leadership, after consulting with the national leadership, decided to field the same candidate from the Lok Sabha election in the November 2024 Assembly byelection.
From Delhi’s perspective, fielding Krishnakumar made sense because voters knew him well. But in Palakkad, his frequent appearances as a candidate in local, State, and national elections had worn out his appeal. This voter fatigue partly explains why the BJP’s vote share dropped by 4,000 compared to the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
Rivals’ upperhand
The BJP’s strategy of fielding the same candidate, despite investing heavily in manpower and resources, was outsmarted by both the Congress and the Left Front. Though the Congress struggled with infighting over candidate selection, the party eventually chose someone it believed could effectively challenge the BJP. Meanwhile, the Left Front made a strategic move by selecting Left Democratic Front’s (LDF) P. Sarin, a former Congress member who had left his party after being denied the seat—a choice aimed at expanding their support beyond their traditional “red” vote base.
As far as the Left Front was concerned, the candidate who was backed by the alliance, Sarin, fitted in well as an excuse: If the candidate performed badly, there was no loss because he was not contesting on the CPI(M) symbol. If he did well, the government could claim that anti-incumbency was a figment of the opposition’s imagination.
As luck would have it, the Sarin, former Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee Digital Media Convenor, polled over 37,000 votes and expanded the LDF vote base by a noticeable 1.5 per cent plus—more than enough to deflect criticism from the governing alliance. It was satisfying for the alliance that the BJP candidate had polled barely 2,000 votes more than Sarin.
The biggest surprise was the Congress candidate Rahul Mamkootathil, who claims that he is from the “Oommen Chandy School of Politics” (a reference to the “clean” administration of the former Chief Minister). When counting began, he took the lead even in Palakkad town, laying bare the fissures in the RSS-BJP relationship in the only town that the BJP runs in Kerala. The BJP’s negative campaign also did not seem to yield results.
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It had tried to paint Rahul as a “sidekick” of former MLA and current MP Shafi Parambil. There were overt references to his religion, Islam, but unlike earlier times, this time Palakkad’s Hindus did not heed the BJP’s call. Shafi’s religion was at the centre of the BJP-RSS campaign from 2011—the year he was first elected as MLA—to increase the party’s following and voter base. This is reflected in all the numbers since then, reaching a pinnacle in the 2021 Assembly election.
The BJP’s Palakkad municipal chairperson, Prameela Sasidharan, did not mince words when she was asked why the BJP lost the seat. “Flawed candidate selection,” she told reporters on November 25. Her critics held that it was the poor performance of the city municipality that led to the rout.
BJP’s Kerala in-charge, Prakash Javadekar, who has seen as many ups as downs in his political career, told supporters not to be unduly worried. “We will win Palakkad and many more Assembly seats in 2026,” he posted on the social media platform X.
For now, despite the demands for a leadership change, there appears to be no such move in the party.
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