The 2024 Lok Sabha elections will take place in seven phases, starting on April 19 and concluding on June 1. The Election Commission of India said that the votes will be counted on June 4. Polling for Kerala’s 20 Lok Sabha seats will be held on April 26, per the schedule released on March 16. The voting in Kerala, like the previous general elections, will take place on a single day to avoid conflicts with Vishu, Thrissur Pooram and Eid-ul-Fitr.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has struggled to win any seats in the southern state, hopes for a breakthrough in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The state is one of the few that consistently supports Congress and is well-known for its strong left-leaning politics.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA), led by the Congress, won 19 of Kerala’s 20 seats by a wide margin in 2019. The National Democratic Alliance, led by the BJP, formed a government in the Centre but was unable to win any seats there. Nonetheless, the saffron party secured almost 15% of the vote. It’s interesting to note that the Left Democratic Front (LDF), which had been in power, suffered a severe setback and only won one seat in the elections.
Here are the key seats to watch out for in Kerala:
Palakkad is a high-priority constituency for the BJP in Kerala since it is the only municipality where the BJP holds a clear majority. In 2019, Congress candidate VK Sreekandan won the seat against all odds by over 11,000 votes against the sitting Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP MB Rajesh.
Sreekantan is once again in the fray. Challenging him is A Vijayaraghavan, a member of the CPI(M) Politburo, who is married to the state's minister of higher education, R Bindu, for the LDF. Krishnakumar, the BJP's state general secretary, is running for Lok Sabha from Palakkad for the second time.
Actor-politician Suresh Gopi, who ran an unsuccessful campaign from Thrissur in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, is once again fighting on a BJP ticket. He will face Congress candidate K Muraleedharan, the sitting MP from Vadakara and son of the late chief minister K Karunakaran.
Muraleedharan, the four-time MP and two-time MLA, is known for winning tough contests, including the Vattiyoorkavu Assembly constituency in Thiruvananthapuram and the Vadakara Lok Sabha seat.
The majority of Christian voters in the constituency — over 30% — will be crucial in determining the outcome in this constituency.
One of the most high-profile seats in not just Kerala but across the country, Thiruvananthapuram will see a three-cornered battle between three-time MP Shashi Tharoor, former CPI MP Pannyan Raveendran and Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar.
Kerala’s capital city has either supported the Congress or the Communist Party of India (CPI). The closest the BJP got to winning the seat was in 2014 when Olanchery Rajagopal lost to Shashi Tharoor by a vote count of 15,470.
Shashi Tharoor ran in the 2019 elections against Kummanam Rajasekharan of the BJP. Rajasekharan lost to him by a total of 99,989 votes. Tharoor received 41.19% of the vote, compared to 31.30% for the BJP candidate.
CPI’s C Divakaran garnered 2,58,556 votes, or 25.60% of the total.
The Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha constituency is also expected to see a three-way contest in the 2024 general elections, with the BJP fielding veteran Congress leader AK Antony's son Anil Antony. The Congress party is sticking with Anto Antony, the sitting MP. The CPI-M has fielded former state finance minister Thomas Isaac.
Since the 2009 general elections, voters in the Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha seat have shown steady and continuous support for Congress candidate Anto Antony.
In 2019, Anto Antony defeated BJP's K Surendran and CPM's Veena George by 380,927 votes.
From Kasargod, the BJP has fielded ML Ashwini, a Manjeshwar block panchayat member, in place of BJP national office bearer PK Krishnadas and state president K Surendran. Rajmohan Unnithan, the sitting Congress MP, is seeking re-election from the seat. M V Balakrishnan, district secretary of the CPI(M), has been put out by the LDF as their candidate.
With 474,961 votes, Unnithan was victorious from the Kasaragod seat in the 2019 elections. With 434,523 votes, CPM’s KP Satishchandran finished in second.
The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), a Congress alliance partner, is an essential player in the constituency where religious and linguistic minorities typically determine election outcomes.
The Wayanad Lok Sabha seat will be one of the most closely monitored seats in the upcoming Lok Sabha election. The seat is supposedly safe for Congress because sitting MP Rahul Gandhi is seeking re-election from here.
In the 2019 general elections, Congress won a record 64.9% of the votes, while the CPI(M) received just 25.2%.
The wife of CPI(M) General Secretary D Raja, Annie Raja, will square up against Rahul Gandhi. The Congress and the CPI(M) have decided to go solo in the Kerala Lok Sabha elections, despite the two parties being part of the INDIA alliance.
(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
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