Kerala: Left Front begins house visits to recoup lost ground before assembly polls

Bengaluru: The CPI(M)-led ruling LDF in Kerala on Thursday launched a door-to-door interaction with voters to understand the reasons for its setback in last month’s local body polls and to make amends well in time before the assembly polls due in April.

Leaders and workers of all LDF constituents will be visiting houses, both to reinforce “our pro-people policies and to hear from them if they have found any lapses on our part”, state industries and law minister P Rajeeve told ET.

The exercise will go on for a week, said Rajeeve, a senior CPI(M) leader. Soon after this, the LDF will hold three zone-level marches to highlight its developmental work.


The LDF, led by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, is seeking a third term win in the 140-seat Kerala assembly.

Rajeeve said the Congress-led UDF’s poll performance in the local body elections in 2010 was much better than now, but in the assembly elections that followed a year later, it was ahead by only three seats. In these three seats too, the Left lost by about 500 votes, he said, while not ruling out a similar pattern in the upcoming elections, too.

“We have analysed the local body election results. We have done better than in 2010, leading in 58 assembly seats. We still have time to recoup,” he said.

The LDF is “hoping for continuity going by its record of performance in health, education and investments leading to jobs,” the minister said. Earlier, people were migrating to other places, but now people are returning to Kerala, he claimed.

The LDF, Rajeeve said, emerged stronger than before in the last assembly elections. Within the UDF, on the other hand, the Indian Union Muslim League is becoming a dominant force, not because of any increase in its influence on voters, but the Congress itself is weakening, he claimed. The Congress, he said, had been on a decline since its best performance in 2001.

As the LDF and UDF are gearing up for a fierce electoral battle, the BJP is also eying double-digit seats from the earlier lacklustre performance.

Union home minister Amit Shah kick-started BJP’s preparations for the elections last Sunday by holding meetings with the core committee and newly elected members from across local bodies in the state. The party’s confidence levels have gone up after it emerged the single largest party in Thiruvananthapuram, installing its first mayor and deputy mayor in a municipal corporation in the state.

In the local body polls last month, the UDF made a forceful comeback in pockets where the LDF held sway. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections too, the UDF turned in an impressive show, winning 18 out of the 20 seats from the state. The BJP that for the first time won a Lok Sabha seat from the state, Thrissur, is working to increase its vote share and net some seats. Nemom in the state capital, where O Rajagopal won in 2016, was the only seat the BJP ever held in the Kerala assembly.

Kerala Assembly Elections: Party-wise seats won

Year	Cong	IUML	CPI(M)	CPI	BJP
2001	62	16	23	7	0
2006	24	7	61	17	0
2011	38	20	45	13	0
2016	22	18	58	19	1
2021	21	15	62	17	0