The Manjeshwar Assembly seat in Kerala’s Kasaragod district has been a tantalising prospect for the BJP for the past several years as the party had come close to winning it repeatedly in recent elections, but still failed to clinch it.
This is the turf of senior BJP leader K Surendran, who has already fought three elections from this constituency since 2011, narrowly losing the last two polls. The 56-year-old former Kerala BJP chief is again in the fray from the seat, hoping to get lucky in his fourth attempt in the April 9 Assembly polls.
This is also known asa stronghold of theIndian Union Muslim League (IUML), a key ally of the Opposition Congress-led UDF, with the seat being currently held by the IUML’s A K M Ashraf, who has again got his party ticket.
While the ruling CPI(M) has also fielded its Kasaragod district leader K R Jayananda from the seat, the contest is expected to be essentially between the IUML and the BJP. Manjeshwar marks the only seat in Kerala where the BJP is pitted against the IUML in a direct fight.
The campaigning kicked off here on a stormy note after the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), the political wing of the banned right wing outfit Popular Front of India (PFI), was forced to withdraw its candidate under pressure from various Muslim organisations, which feared that the SDPI’s entry would split the Muslim votes and give an advantage to the BJP.
TheIUML’s canvassing seems to be calibrated. Apart from targeting the CPI(M)-led LDF dispensation over its alleged failures on the governance front, the party is flagging issues like the CAA, SIR and Uniform Civil Code in a bid to target the BJP.
On the other hand, the BJP’s campaign is centred on a development plank, amplifying Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pitch for “Vikasita Keralam (developed Kerala)”.
The constituency has always figured on top of the BJP’s electoral radar. It has had Sangh Parivar roots since the days of the Jan Sangh, the BJP’s forerunner. In 1991, veteran BJP leader K G Marar lost the election from here by just 1072 votes, when the party was not even considered a notable player in state politics.
In the 2000s, Kasaragod witnessed a few incidents of communal violence, leading to polarisation, following which the BJP gained ground, growing in the belt as a section of the Left supporters from the Hindu community switched their allegiance to the party.
The region seems to have moved on in the last 15 years, with Surendran framing his electoral strategy around the themes of development and youth’s aspirations. He has even brought out a manifesto for the constituency in this regard, making pledges to address various needs of the region, which has been lagging behind on various development parameters.
A local IUML worker Moitheen, a fish trader, agrees that the area has remained “backward”. “For higher education and health care, we have to depend on the neighbouring state. The region is neglected on the development front. For jobs too, people here depend on Mangaluru. At the same time, people are politically vigilant. That is why SDPI was forced to withdraw their candidate,’’ he says.
A Muslim cleric Muneer Saqafi says, “Nobody is afraid of BJP now. The party has been ruling the country for 12 years. But the community here by and large remains with IUML. We hail the decision of SDPI to withdraw their candidate.”
“The contest is mainly between BJP and IUML,” admits a Left supporter Umesh P, a resident of Bangara area. “The Left has been on the decline and cannot consolidate the Hindu votes here in its favour anymore.”
Surendran had come within a striking distance of bagging the seat twice – in2021, when he was beaten by Ashraf by 745 votes, and in 2016, when he lost to the IUML’s P B Abdul Razak by just 89 votes.
The Hindu and Muslim groups inManjeshwar make up 47% and 51% of its population respectively, with Christians accounting for a mere 2%.
Surendran has also been trying to reach out to Muslim voters in the constituency. Speaking to The Indian Express, he says, “The Muslim community has realised that the Modi government is not against them. We have many voters working in the Gulf countries. We also have voters working in the BJP-ruled states. People have abandoned their stand that they will not allow BJP anywhere in Kerala, including Manjeshwar.’’
Surendran maintains that “the Muslim approach towards the BJP has changed”. He says, “In this seat, Muslims no longer believe that they should vote en bloc for a party or a candidate to defeat Surendran. I know these sentiments would help me get a chunk of Muslim votes too.”
The BJP won its first-ever Assembly seat in Kerala in 2016, when party veteran O Rajagopal won from Nemom in Thiruvananthapuram. In the 2021 polls, the party however failed to open its account. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP’s Suresh Gopi, the actor-turned politician, won from Thrissur, the party’s first ever parliamentary seat in the state.
In the upcoming Assembly polls, theBJP is contesting 98 seats of the state’s 140, with its NDA allies Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) and Twenty20 Party fighting from 22 and 19 seats respectively.
