Kochi: A pro-Congress wave that favours the United Democratic Front (UDF) in parliamentary elections in Kerala, a decrease in traditional votes, and an anti-incumbency sentiment are some of the key setbacks the ruling CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) faced in the state, and were contributing factors to them winning only one (Alathur) of the 20 constituencies in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The Congress-led UDF won 18 seats and the BJP-led NDA won one.
The CPI(M), which reviewed its polls debacle in a three-day state committee meeting in Thiruvananthapuram, said Thursday that the party failed to understand the public sentiment. Addressing the media after the conclusion of the meeting, CPI(M) State Secretary M.V. Govindan told ThePrint that community-based organisations have started prioritising the interests of communal forces.
“An important section is SNDP (Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam). The organisation was formed on the ethos of Sree Narayana Guru, who advocated one caste, one religion and one God for humans. But since the formation of the BDJS (Bharath Dharma Jana Sena), Thushar Vellappally has been penetrating into the votes of the community as per the plan of the BJP,” Govindan said.
The leader added that organisations like Jamaat-e-Islami and SDPI (Social Democratic Party of India) did not contest the elections and served as an ally of the UDF in Kerala. He also said that the biggest danger arising from the result was the BJP’s winning its first seat ever in the state.
The SNDP is a social service organisation founded in 1903 by Padmanabhan Palpu, a follower of Sree Narayana Guru, to represent the Ezhava community from Kerala. The Ezhava community is the vote base for the LDF in the state. The BDJS, which is the political wing of the SNDP, was founded in 2015. It is an ally of the NDA.
While Kerala favoured the Congress during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the coalition formed by the party with others suffered a vote loss of nearly three percentage points this year compared to 2019, sparking speculation that a significant share of the coalition’s core vote base has shifted to the BJP.
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Increasing number of votes for the BJP
Kerala-based political analyst and historian K.N. Ganesh told ThePrint that there was no shocking change in the results compared to 2019 except for the increasing number of votes for the BJP, which affected both the LDF and the UDF.
“CPI(M) had a setback similar to this in the 2019 polls too. Then too the party won only one seat. But what is new is that the votes went to the BJP. Kerala has reached a triangular contest. There has also been an erosion in traditional votes of the LDF,” R. Nazar, CPI(M) Alappuzha district secretary, told ThePrint.
The LDF had managed to win only one seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls too, while the UDF had won 19 seats. Though the UDF managed to maintain its victory in the state in 2024 too by winning 18 seats, its vote share decreased from 47.48 percent to 45.21 percent.
On the other hand, the BJP-led NDA increased its vote share to 19.24 percent from 15.64 percent. The NDA was able to increase its vote share significantly in many constituencies, the most important of which is Alappuzha, a district considered a Left citadel.
BJP candidate Sobha Surendran increased the NDA’s vote share to 28.3 percent from 17.24 percent in Alappuzha, while LDF’s vote share dwindled to 32.2 percent from 40.96 percent. However, Surendran lost Alappuzha to Congress’s K.C. Venugopal.
Alappuzha was the lone victory of the LDF in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Likewise, the BJP finished first in 11 assembly segments in the Lok Sabha elections: five in Thiruvananthapuram (Nemom, Kazhakkoottam, Vattiyoorkavu, Attingal, and Kattakkada) and six in Thrissur (Thrissur, Ollur, Natika, Irinjalakuda, Puthukad, and Manalur).
All of these constituencies currently have LDF MLAs, and include the constituencies of Minister for Higher Education and Social Justice R. Bindu (Irinjalakuda) and Minister for General Education and Labour Vasudevan Sivankutty (Nemom).
Mirash Cherian Kurian, a professor of political science at Kerala’s Mahatma Gandhi University, told ThePrint that the CPI(M) should address the issue of growing foothold of BJP in Kerala, which is its last resort. He said Tripura and West Bengal, the two states where the party was once strong, witnessed a pattern similar to what Kerala is now seeing.
“In Bengal, TMC has been growing since 2011. In Tripura, BJP rose. If you look at where the party’s votes went, BJP is a major factor there. Kerala is the party’s last resort. They should secure it. The party should examine this,” Mirash said, adding that there is a sentiment among upper-caste Christians in the state that the BJP is not a bad party.
Anti-incumbency sentiment
Analysts and party leaders ThePrint spoke to said that the LDF, which got a historic consecutive second term in the 2021 Assembly elections in the state, was facing the heat of the anti-incumbency sentiment against the Pinarayi Vijayan-led government. LDF won 91 of the 140 Assembly seats in 2016, and was re-elected in 2021 after winning 99 seats.
However, the LDF faced a major setback in its second term due to a delay in paying out social security pensions and Dearness Relief (DR) arrears to employees. The Kerala government is distributing six types of social security pension. These include the national old age pension, widow pension, and the agriculture labour pension.
In the Assembly session held Thursday, Kerala Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal said the pension disbursal was pending for the past five months and arrears will be cleared soon.
Nazar said there was a protest against the government which resulted in several people not voting for it.
However, CPI(M) and former Kalpetta MLA C.K. Saseendran told ThePrint that the people of Kerala thought Congress had a better chance of taking on the BJP compared to the Left parties and the voters were not completely against the CPI(M).
“This is not the first time it has happened. We got only one seat in the last Lok Sabha polls too. But just after that, we won local body polls and the assembly polls. We got continuous terms for the first time in the history of Kerala. There are different political atmospheres for the Assembly polls and parliamentary polls in Kerala. But we will analyse and rectify our shortcomings,” said Saseendran.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
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