Wayanad Lok Sabha and two Assembly by-polls in Kerala will be a watershed moment in Kerala politics. Kerala politics is all set to take a new turn during and after the by-poll. Two Assembly seats, Palakkad and Chelakkara, are going to a by-poll, too. Palakkad and Chelakkara seats were vacated due to the election of the Congress party MLA Shafi Parambil and CPM MLA K. Radhakrishnan elected to Lok Sabha. On Wayanad Lok Sabha seat and these two Assembly seats, the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) is fighting a tough fight against the traditional rivals in Kerala politics, the UDF and the LDF.
Wayanad Lok Sabha by-poll will be held in a similar pattern to that of Bellary in Karnataka. In the 1999 Lok Sabha election, Sonia Gandhi filed her nomination from two seats of Amethi and Bellary. She won both the seats. She resigned from the Bellary LS seat. After that, the Congress party lost elections in Bellary in 2004, 2009, 2014, and 2019 LS elections. The voters of Bellary and Karnataka have punished the Congress party due to the mistrust of Sonia Gandhi and the Gandhi family in Karnataka. After 1999, the Congress party lost the Assembly election in Karnataka in 2004.
Rahul Gandhi’s resignation from the Wayanad LS seat led to a big distrust among the people of Kerala. Wayanad stood by Rahul Gandhi in 2019 when he lost even his familiar fiefdom of Amethi. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, Gandhi’s family took advantage of the election schedule.
Wayanad Seat was voted in the second phase, while Rae Bareli was voted in the fifth phase along with the whole State. Rae Bareli’s seat was notified after voting for the second phase in Wayanad. Rahul Gandhi kept his voters in Wayanad in the dark and did not make clear his intention of contesting from another seat either in Amethi or in Rae Bareli. So, we can also infer that Rahul Gandhi cheated the voters of Wayanad.
The Gandhi family’s actions have provided a significant opportunity for the BJP to expand its influence in Kerala. The BJP’s growing acceptability in Kerala was evident in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, where it opened its account in the Lok Sabha by winning the Thrissur Lok Sabha seat. The BJP also emerged as the runner-up in the Thiruvananthapuram LS seat, as it did in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP’s performance on the Assembly seats was equally impressive, with the party either leading or coming in second on 20 Assembly seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. This has sounded a major alarm for the two leading alliances in Kerala, the United Democratic Front (UDF) led by the Congress party and the Left Democratic Front (LDF) led by the CPM, indicating a potential shift in power dynamics.
In Karnataka, the BJP was in the process of getting strengthened before 1999. Still, after Sonia Gandhi mistrusted the people of Karnataka, the BJP got a big boost, and the BJP formed a government in Karnataka too.
Similar to the Karnataka pattern, the BJP is on the ascendance in Kerala, and due to the betrayal of the Gandhi family to Keralites, the BJP will get further strength. The BJP will begin forming a government in the 2026 Kerala Assembly election. The UDF had lost its steam in Kerala, as evident from the 2021 Kerala Assembly verdict. In Kerala, since 1982, there has been a rotation of government election after election between the LDF and the UDF, but in 2021, the LDF bounced back into power by sidelining the UDF turn. The voters of the UDF are in denial mode and will switch to the resurgent BJP. This happened in Kerala politics after Rahul Gandhi’s advent in 2019 LS. The UDF and the Congress party paid a heavy price due to the direct entry of the Gandhi family into Kerala politics.
