The Bharatiya Janata Party, keen on making inroads in Kerala, is considering fielding popular Malayalam actor Unni Mukundan in Palakkad, where the party wields considerable influence among voters.
According to local media reports, Mukundan tops the list of probable candidates, which also includes the names of the party's former state chief K. Surendran, Prashant Shivan, and Adv. E. Krishnadas.
The party is also considering the names of Thiruvananthapuram councillor R. Sreelekha and firebrand leader Shobha Surendran, though reports suggest Shobha is not particularly keen to contest from Palakkad.
Sreelekha had recently put the party in a fix by openly expressing her displeasure over the denial of the Mayoral post in the capital city.
According to a Malayalam news portal, the party had assigned an agency to study the characteristics and dynamics of each constituency in the state. The agency’s report suggests that Mukundan has the highest winnability in Palakkad.
Neither the party nor the actor has made any public statement on the matter.
Meanwhile, the BJP has already announced the candidature of its state president, Rajiv Chandrasekhar, in Nemom—the lone constituency the party won in the 2016 elections. However, in the 2021 polls, the party lost this seat to CPI(M)’s V. Sivankutty.
Buoyed by its impressive performance in the recent local body polls, the saffron party now aims to reopen its account in the Kerala Legislative Assembly and position itself as an alternative to the LDF and the UDF.
In the local body polls held in November, the BJP became the biggest headline grabber, wresting power in the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation and increasing its ward count across the state to 1,919, up from 1,597 in 2020.
