BJP aims to gain in Kerala at CPM’s expense

NEW DELHI: The BJP has mega plans for Kerala and it involves weaning away CPM's support base to start with. In a state where the party has not won a single seat ever in the assembly or Parliament, even as there is a fairly strong RSS organisation in place, BJP's target is to make inroads in the civic and panchayat polls in October 2015, to be followed by assembly elections in April 2016.

"Since the Left's main support comes from Hindus in Kerala and BJP's voters are also Hindus, our growth will have to be at the cost of CPM," BJP state president V Muralidharan told TOI here.

BJP is targetting Scheduled Castes and OBC communities, a very small chunk of which supports the party at present. But the attempt is to win over the big OBC group of Ezhava which constitutes about 22% of the state's voters and Scheduled Castes which account for 10% of the population.

The celebration of 19th century dalit leader Ayyankali's birth anniversary in Delhi in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday was a message in that direction, Muralidharan said. The process began with Modi visiting the 'samadhi sthal' of Sree Narayana Guru, a spiritual leader and an OBC icon, in Shivgiri in April 2013.

According to the strategy devised by party chief Amit Shah for BJP to gain ground in Kerala, the focus on Scheduled Caste leaders and icons will continue. The party has also decided that at least one central minister will visit the state every month. This is also meant to address the cosmopolitan, working class in the state.

As part of the strategy, three ministers are scheduled to visit Kerala in September. While home minister Rajnath Singh will be in Kollam on September 27 to celebrate the birth anniversary of spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi, who hails from the fishing community of dhivars (OBC), health minister Harsh Vardhan will be in Thiruvananthapuram and Muslim-dominated Mallapuram and commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be in Kochi by the end of the month.

Interestingly, the poll schedules and the political circumstances in Kerala are quite similar to West Bengal, another state where the Left has a significant presence and where BJP is trying to gain a foothold following a rise in vote share from 6% to 16% in the last Lok Sabha polls. In the last parliamentary elections, BJP's vote share in Kerala increased from 6% to 10.8%, encouraging the party to raise its game.

The Kerala plan is part of BJP's strategy to conquer new regions in the country following its first majority government at the Centre.