Kochi: The Bharatiy Janata Party (BJP) wasted no time claiming the ‘single largest party’ tag in Kerala, riding on the impressive number of votes party veteran O Rajagopal scored in the Aruvikkara byelection. But a closer look of the electoral statistics when the party fields Mr Rajagopal and others gives a different picture of the party’s claim.
The party makes use of Mr Rajagopal’s wide appeal as a statesman-like politician with clean image and commissions him in almost every election in Kerala in recent times.
One of his appearances in the recent times was from Thiruvananthapuram constituency in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. He polled 1,58,221 votes, which is almost double the number Mr Kerala Varma Raja which the party supported in 1998 elections.
Mr Rajagopal continued with the good show in the 2004 election when he scored 2,28,052 votes. However, the BJP share fell drastically in the bye-election which held the next year following the death of CPI veteran P K Vasudevan Nair. BJP former state president C K Padmanabhan scored 36,690 votes, amid charges of vote trading by the rival factions in the BJP.
When P K Krishnadas, another former state president contested the 2009 elections, he was able to score only 84,0944 votes; but when the party fielded Mr Rajagopal in the 2014 elections, he scored 2,84,336 votes, came second pushing the LDF candidate Dr Bennet Abraham of the CPI to the third spot.
Mr Rajagopal’s appeal brought a good number of votes for the party in the elections to the State Assembly, too. He got 43,661 votes in the Nemom constituency in the 2011 elections, which was almost seven times the votes the party candidate got in the 2006 elections.
In the Neyyanttinkara byelection in 2012, he scored 30,661 votes against 6,708 votes the party candidate scored in the elections held a year before.
“Mr Rajagopal is undoubtedly the best candidate we can field in the state,” sayd BJP state vice-president M T Ramesh. “But that does not mean that we get votes only when he contests. The part got more than 1 lakh votes in seven Lok Sabha seats in the last election.”
