Could BJP infighting in Kerala dash its Palakkad bypoll win hopes?

With campaigning for by-elections to the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat and Chelakkara Assembly seat coming to an end, the focus has now shifted to the Palakkad Assembly seat in Kerala.
For the BJP, Palakkad is the most promising Assembly constituency; it has over 70 per cent of Hindu voters and in the past two Assembly polls, the party came second.
In the 2021 state elections, ‘Metro Man’ E Sreedharan lost to Shafi Parambil by just 3,859 votes.
Palakkad will witness a three-way contest between BJP candidate C Krishnakumar, Congress’s Rahul Mamkootathil and Left Democratic Front’s P Sarin.
Krishnakumar is no electoral novice; he was the BJP’s candidate for the Palakkad Lok Sabha seat in this past election as well as in 2019. He was also the candidate who nearly dethroned veteran CPI(M) leader VS Achuthanandan from his Malampuzha seat in the 2016 state elections.
Krishnakumar is the party’s state general secretary and a four-time councillor in the Palakkad municipal corporation. According to sources, Krishnakumar was chosen from among several party probables.
Union Minister Suresh Gopi had reportedly suggested Sobha Surendran’s name to the central leadership. Sandeep G Varier, who had taken a veiled dig at Krishnakumar on Facebook a few days ago, was also a frontrunner, sources suggest.
Surendran is the party’s state vice-president. She was also the BJP’s 2024 Lok Sabha candidate from Alappuzha. Varier, on the other hand, is a senior party worker who has been a Sangh Parivar activist since he was ten.
However, all is not well within the state BJP as party workers are reportedly not pleased with Krishnakumar’s candidature.
BN Sivashankar, a lawyer and a political watcher in the state, said Varier would have been a better candidate than Krishnakumar to prop BJP’s chances.
“Sandeep Varier is a better candidate as he is not just popular with the public, but also among the ground-level BJP workers,” Sivashankar said.
According to Sivashankar, Krishnakumar is the “stumbling block” for the BJP in the Assembly seat and the only way for the party to leverage their position within the city corporation is if “Krishnakumar comes in third and loses his deposit.”
“Unlike Sandeep Varier, Krishnakumar only has the backing of the leadership. He is not very popular among the party workers. The BJP will be liberated from the clutches of Krishnakumar only if he loses with a huge majority, which seems unlikely,” Sivashankar said.
With the consistent increase in vote share in the past few state elections, the BJP wants to breach into the state assembly through Palakkad.
The party wants to capitalise on the favourable voting public that is predominantly Hindu and show that the Nemom (in Thiruvananthapuram district) seat win was not a fluke but the first step to establishing the party as a third front in the state.
Palakkad is the only seat in Kerala which will vote on November 20. Wayanad and Chelakkara will vote on November 13. With nearly 14 lakh voters registered in the constituency, the voter turnout in Palakkad has consistently been over 70 per cent in any given election since 2006.