The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)‘s Kerala unit has attracted a motley crew of disaffected Congress leaders and workers to its fold. However, the elusive political holy grail for the BJP is a defection from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] to its side.
The BJP has left no stone unturned to break the jinx and gain a propaganda advantage over the CPI(M) at the 2024 Lok Sabha election hustings.
The BJP’s Kerala in-charge, Prakash Javadekar, put the political rumour mill on overdrive by hosting S. Rajendran, former CPI(M) legislator from Idukki district, at the party’s national headquarters in New Delhi on March 20 (Wednesday).
Nothing political: Rajendran
Mr. Rajendran, who returned to Idukki on March 21 (Thursday), told local reporters that he would campaign for the Left Democratic Front (LDF). He claimed that he had gone to New Delhi to raise the issues faced by plantation workers when someone invited him to meet Mr. Javadekar. He said the impromptu exchange of pleasantries held “no political ramifications.”
Mr. Rajendran, a well-known and controversial figure in Idukki politics, has deep pockets of influence among Tamil-speaking people in the Devikulam, Peermade, and Udumbanchola areas. Plantation workers and their families form the bulk of his supporters.
Mr. Rajendran was elected to the Kerala Legislative Assembly from the Devikulam constituency in 2006, 2011, and 2016.
The CPI(M) ousted him from the party in 2022 on the charge of plotting to scuttle A. Raja’s chances in the 2021 Assembly polls.
He had also been at odds with the CPI(M) district leadership, in which M.M. Mani, MLA, allegedly has an outsized say.
Since then, Mr. Rajendran has stepped back from frontline politics. However, of late, Mr. Rajendran had sought to put the CPI(M) on tenterhooks by stating that the BJP leadership had approached him when the party’s State president K. Surendran’s ‘Kerala Padayatra’ reached Idukki.
He appeared to have tightened the screws on the CPI(M) by visiting Mr. Javadekar, perhaps in a bid to bargain with the ruling party from the point of strength.
The BJP reckoned that Mr. Rajendran’s “defection” would be a major scalp for the party in Kerala. It could deliver a big blow to the CPI(M), which projected itself as an impregnable anti-Sangh Parivar fortress. The CPI(M) has sought to woo secular and minority votes by accusing the Congress of being permeable to the BJP’s inducements.
CPI(M) State Secretary M.V. Govindan told reporters in Kannur that Mr. Rajendran would campaign for the LDF in Idukki. He said the party wanted him back in the organisational fold.
Mr. Mani dismissed the import of Mr. Rajendran’s one-to-one with Mr. Javadekar in New Delhi and said he perceived “nothing unusual.”
