Kerala: Upbeat BJP plans spectacle

KOZHIKODE: The state BJP leadership hopes to cash in on the hype created over the three-day  national executive and council meetings here from Friday. Though the conclave is being held to kick-start the year-long celebrations of  the election of Deendayal Upadyaya  as all-India president  of the Jan Sangh  here five  decades ago, BJP national leadership wants to make  Kerala  a fertile ground for the party to grow.  But it is clear that  Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call to win a dozen seats from Kerala in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections is  a Herculean task. The BJP is trying for a show of strength in Kozhikode  after having increased  its vote share in the state elections.   State president Kummanam Rajasekharan told DC that the public support for the party will increase manifold in the coming days.  

“We have completed more than 18,000 booth committee meetings across the state  in  the run up to the conclave.  We also completed  door-to-door campaigns emphasising the importance of having an alternative front in the state.  The LDF government has  unleashed violence against the BJP. The  UDF is also no different,” he said. The BJP leaders are apprehensive of the fact that they do not have much to show except the victory of Mr  O. Rajagopal from Nemom after spending  a whopping '400  crore in the recent Assembly polls. Former BJP state president P. K. Krishnadas said that they had only a membership of  2,500  in 1967. “From there, we have now reached a strength of over 22 lakh.  Our motto is ‘New Keralam’ which is  aimed at the youth and we are confident of increasing our  popularity,”  he said.

But the BJP leaders are tight-lipped on the strategy to  win  a dozen Lok Sabha seats. The BJP council resolution will highlight the development agenda. The central BJP leaders have  already told their  state counterparts that they  want nothing less than victory. The BJP’s vote share has been steadily increasing over the years. It went up from 4.75 percent in the 2006 Assembly elections to 6.03 percent in the 2011 polls. Similarly, it rose from 6.03 percent in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls to 10.3 percent in the 2014 general elections. In  the November 2015 local bodies elections, BJP’s vote share rose to an all-time high of 14 percent. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the NDA  got 14.89 percent vote share while the BJP achieved 15 percent.

What is worrying the state BJP leaders  is their lack of 'winnable faces'  for the next Lok Sabha elections. There are only a handful of them from the core committee who can chart victory and are banking on the seven Assembly seats where they had come to the second position as well as on the 64 Assembly constituencies where they managed to get over 20,000 votes each.  The central BJP leadership is also banking on the development projects ranging from railways, NH development to agriculture worth over Rs 35, 000 crore which were sanctioned for Kerala to woo the people.