‘NDA may have lost its lone seat in Kerala, but is making a mark’
May 03, 2021
It is a runner up in nine seats this time against six in 2016
The NDA may have lost its lone seat of Nemom in Kerala and seen a significant erosion in vote share to 11.3 per cent, but it can draw comfort from the fact that it has come up in the second position in as many as nine seats. This is an improvement on the 2016 tally when it was runners-up in only six though with a vote share of 14.96 per cent.
The nine seats are Manjeswar (K Surendran, State President, with vote share of 37.7 per cent); Nemom (Kummanam Rajasekharan, 35.54 per cent); Palakkad (Metroman E Sreedharan, 35.34 per cent); Kasaragod (K Sreekanth, 34.88 per cent); Malampuzha (C Krishnakumar, 30.68 per cent); Chathannoor (BB Gopakumar, 30.61 per cent); Kazhakkoottam (Sobha Surendran, 29.06 per cent); Vattiyoorkavu (VV Rajesh, 28.77 per cent); and Attingal (P Sudheer, 25.92 per cent).
Is Kerala the next laboratory for BJP to try out ‘Operation Kamala’?
April 06, 2021
K Surendran×
Will it be the suitably ‘muddy’ but untested terrain of Kerala that the BJP may choose to enact ‘Operation Kamala’, which it has carried out with clinical precision in Puducherry after blazing a trail in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Manipur and Karnataka and ultimately forming governments in those States?
Observers here have been debating this possibility after the President of the State unit of the party, K Surendran, went on record more than once saying that the party would rule ‘if it manages to get 35 to 40 seats’ in the 140-member Assembly’, where a contender party/front needs 71 seats to form a government on its own.