Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 2 (PTI) In a bid to make inroads into Kerala's tough political environment, the BJP on Saturday fielded actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi and Union Ministers of State V Muraleedharan and Rajeev Chandrasekhar from the Thrissur, Attingal and Thiruvananthapuram constituencies respectively, where the party claims to have a significant vote share.
Besides them, the other prominent candidate fielded by BJP in Kerala is Anil K Antony, son of Congress veteran and former Union minister A K Antony, who will contest from the Pathanamthitta constituency.
The BJP also fielded a Muslim candidate from Kerala -- Dr Abdul Salam M, the former Vice Chancellor of Calicut University.
Gopi was sworn in as a Rajya Sabha MP after being nominated by the President of India in the category of eminent citizens under Article 80 of the Indian Constitution in 2016.
The actor later contested in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls as a BJP candidate from the Thrissur constituency, but could only manage to come third behind the Congress and CPI candidates.
The BJP is hoping to capitalise on his star status by fielding him from Thrissur again.
Muraleedharan, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs, was elected as a Rajya Sabha MP from Maharashtra in 2018.
Prior to that, from 2006 to 2010, he was the state vice president of the BJP. After that, he served as the state president twice, from 2010 to 2013 and 2013 to 2015.
In 2019, he was appointed as the Government Deputy Chief Whip in the Rajya Sabha.
Chandrasekhar is the Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Electronics and Information Technology.
He was an independent Rajya Sabha MP representing Karnataka from 2006 to 2018 and was re-elected to the upper House again for a third six-year term in 2018 from the same state as a BJP member.
Chandrasekhar, who is also an entrepreneur and technocrat, has also served as the national spokesperson of the BJP and vice-chairman of the Kerala unit of the NDA.
Salam is the sole Muslim candidate fielded by the party from Kerala in its first list of 195 members selected for the LS polls.
Born in 1952, his career has spanned more than four decades.
Salam was a professor in the Kerala Agriculture university prior to becoming the Vice Chancellor of the Calicut varsity.
In 2021 state elections, he was fielded as the BJP candidate from Tirur Assembly constituency, but was able to bag only 5.33 per cent of the votes.
Anil, who was the former head of the Kerala Congress digital media cell, had joined the BJP after criticising the grand old party over its stand on the controversial BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He is presently the national secretary and national spokesperson of the BJP.
Anil identifies himself as a tech entrepreneur and joined active politics in 2019 as a member of the Congress party in Kerala.
Shobha Surendran is a firebrand BJP leader who hails from Thrissur and is currently fielded from the Alappuzha Lok Sabha seat.
She was the state president of the Mahila Morcha and a member of the party's core committee.
She has also held various positions in the party.
In the 2016 assembly elections, she contested from Palakkad and lost.
Shobha contested from the Attingal Lok Sabha constituency in 2019; and in the 2021 assembly polls, she tried her luck from the Kazhakoottam constituency in Thiruvananthapuram.
M T Ramesh, who has been fielded from Kozhikode is a senior leader and a general secretary of the BJP.
He is one of the prominent faces of the BJP and his name was discussed during the selection for the BJP state president last time.
The other candidates fielded by the saffron party in the southern state include M L Ashwini from Kasaragod, C Raghunath from Kannur, Prafulla Krishna from Vadakara, Niveditha Subramanian from Ponnani and C Krishnakumar from Palakkad constituencies.