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The Aruvikkara by-election to the Kerala Assembly has acquired a new dimension with the BJP deciding to field 85-year-old O Rajagopal, the party’s best-ever electoral bet in Kerala, though he has so far lost all the elections he has fought.
Though the BJP has not made an official announcement, the party’s core committee took the decision as it was keen on fielding a strong candidate to take on the two rival fronts, the UDF and LDF.
By putting up Rajagopal, who was a Minister of State in the Vajpayee government, the BJP has made it very clear that it means business and that is not contended to be an also-ran as in the past by-elections.
Win or fail, it will be the best foot forward to the 2016 Assembly election at which the party promises to spring surprises and for which the Hindutva brigade has been making advance preparations ever since the Narendra Modi government came to power at the Centre.
Rajagopal had made the BJP’s presence felt in the Lok Sabha elections from Thiruvananthapuram in 2004 and 2014. His spectacular performance in the 2014 election, pushing the LDF candidate to the third place, had boosted the BJP morale tremendously.
(Shashi Tharoor of the Congress won the election for the second time in a row).
Aruvikkara is one of the seven Assembly constituencies of the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency. In the 2011 Assembly election, the BJP candidate secured around 7,000 votes, but the BJP membership in the constituency has increased substantially over the past four years.
The entry of Rajagopal will make the Aruvikkara by-election, which has been necessitated by the death of former Speaker and Congress leader G Karthikeyan, a tough three-cornered battle.
In need of a winThe UDF, which badly needs an electoral victory to answer the series of corruption scandals, has fielded Karithkeyan’s son KS Sabarinathan, who is a management professional.
It aims to cash in on the sympathy wave created by his father’s death. The UDF had wanted to put up Karithikeyans’ wife, a former college professor, but she declined.
The LDF has put up the former Assembly Speaker and minister M Vijayakumar to take on Sabarinathan.
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