The Lok Sabha Elections Phase II is to be held on April 26 for Kerala, which provides 20 seats to the lower house. All in all, 194 aspirants competing from 20 seats are vying for voters, and the political contest goes on between the CPI(M) headed government, the Congress-driven opposition, and the BJP-led alliance. The Election Commission counts over five lakh new voters in the state, which is also five times the number of first-time voters.
The electoral outcome of the 2019 Lok Sabha votes placed UDF in 19 out of 20 seats and LDF in merely one seat. Of all the constituencies other than Kerala’s Wayanad, where the sitting MP and the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi wishes to be re-elected, I am most anticipating the events in Wayanad. He is challenged by the CPI’s Annie Raja and from his own party as well, by no less than K Surendran, the state BJP chief. He outmaneuvered CPI Candidates P.P. Suneer in the 2019 general election and won about 400,000 of the total votes.
In Trivandrum (capital of Kerala), Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a Member of Parliament with reasons to go unlimited, contests with Shashi Tharoor, a three-time Congress MP. CPI’s Pannyan Raveendran stands for the LDF as she scrutinizes this constituency.
The actor Suresh Gopi of the BJP locks horns with K Muraleedharan of Congress and VS Sunil Kumar of CPI (M) for the parliamentary seat in Thrissur. In the 2019 election by TN Prathapan, a congress member won, defeating CPI(M)’s Rajaji Mathew Thomas.
In Alappuzha, the post for the Congress party has turned into a matter of pride, and also its general secretary, Mr. K. C. Venugopal, is back in the fighting ground after seeing the 2014 election battle. The party has set a clear goal to retake the seat, which it lost in the 2019 overwhelming win of the LDF led by the CPI(M). Venugopal, who had an unblemished record in the election, was successfully re-elected three times consecutively to the Alappuzha Assembly and also served as a Member of Parliament from Alappuzha twice(in 2009 & 2014).
Check here for the latest updates in Hindi!