There is a quiet confidence about V. Muraleedharan as he moves through the lanes of Kazhakoottam. The former Union Minister, now the BJP’s candidate in one of Kerala’s most closely watched assembly seats, has spent enough years in politics to know the difference between manufactured momentum and the real thing. What he is sensing in Kazhakoottam ahead of the April 9 polls, he insists, is the real thing.
“People are expecting a change. ‘We need a change’ — that is the fervent plea I receive from voters wherever I go,” he says, after hectic day of door-to-door campaigning through neighbourhoods that, until recently, would have been unthinkable terrain for a BJP candidate to work.
Kazhakoottam – BJP to break LDF Fortess
For a constituency long regarded as an LDF fortress, Kazhakoottam has been sending some striking signals. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, BJP’s Rajeev Chandrasekhar topped the Kazhakoottam assembly segment. Then came the 2025 Thiruvananthapuram Corporation elections — what Muraleedharan calls a watershed — where the BJP swept 14 of the constituency’s 28 wards, leaving the LDF with 10 and the UDF with just three. Two consecutive elections, two first-place finishes.
The party that has held second position here since 2016 is now eyeing the top. Standing in its way is Kadakampally Surendran — the sitting MLA, former Devaswom Minister, and a man whose campaign has been visibly shadowed by the Sabarimala gold theft scandal. That his tenure as Devaswom Minister coincided with the alleged looting from the temple treasury is something Muraleedharan raises not with political relish but with a kind of quiet gravity. “This is a very, very emotive issue.
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The ordinary Ayyappa devotee, the general Hindu believer — they feel pained, they feel hurt. The authorities who were supposed to protect Sabarimala, they themselves became party to the loot. And the former minister in whose tenure this happened is now contesting from Kazhakoottam.” He lets that sit. “Naturally, people will express their pain and anguish when the time comes.”
Loot, Lies and a Sangamam: Muraleedharan on LDF’s Political Theatre After Wounding the Ayyappa Faithful
The LDF government’s eleventh-hour attempt to stage a grand Ayyappa devotee Sangamam — widely read as a bid to claw back Hindu sentiment — has drawn only scepticism from Muraleedharan. “The Communist party considers all this political strategy. But even in that, they have done their corruption. These things are not done with commitment — that’s why they do all this drama, and ultimately people realise that.”
Beyond the temple controversy, what Muraleedharan returns to again and again is a simpler, sharper contrast: twelve years of Modi in Delhi against ten years of Pinarayi Vijayan in Thiruvananthapuram. On one side, he argues, a government untouched by corruption charges.
On the other, a revolving door of ministerial resignations. And then the daily reality of Kazhakoottam itself — streets that haven’t seen proper maintenance in decades, households still waiting for the 24/7 drinking water that the Centre’s Jal Jeevan Mission promised, an IT corridor built around India’s first Technopark that deserves far better than it has received from the state.
Water, Roads and a Technocity: Muraleedharan’s Blueprint for Kazhakoottam’s Voters
His promises, if elected, are grounded in exactly these complaints: drinking water to every home, motorable roads, and an ambition to expand Technopark into a full Technocity within the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation — a vision that speaks directly to the young, educated, digitally connected voters who make up a significant slice of Kazhakoottam’s electorate. With about five lakh first-time voters expected to cast ballots on April 9, that demographic could matter enormously. “Prime Minister Modi’s approach of politics of performance is now appealing to the youth,” Muraleedharan says. “BJP will definitely benefit from that — because nobody else can claim it.”
While the Prime Minister’s Jal Jeevan Mission carries the promise of piped water to every home, the reality on the ground in Kazhakoottam tells a different story — one of acute shortage and unmet need. The same gap holds for roads. Where the Centre has pushed National Highways and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana to connect every village, Kazhakoottam’s streets have gone without proper upkeep for years, some for decades. Sanitation, waste management, health, education — sector by sector, Muraleedharan draws the same conclusion. “You compare any sector with the related sector in the Government of India, and one can find that the performance of the Narendra Modi government is far better than the Pinarayi Vijayan government,” he says. The Central government sets the benchmark; the state government, in his telling, simply fails to meet it.
From Red to Saffron: LDF’s Core Voters Are Shifting — And It May Be Permanent
Underneath the candidate-level contest lies a deeper social churn that both parties know will decide more than any single seat. CPIM’s own internal reviews have reportedly flagged that around 30% of Ezhava votes and 45% of Nair votes drifted toward BJP in recent elections — communities that formed the historic backbone of the Left in Kerala.
Muraleedharan doesn’t claim this as a BJP victory so much as an inevitable reckoning. “After supporting the Left for so many years, they have realised that their standard of living has not improved at all. So now they have started rethinking.” The entry of BDJS into the NDA fold since 2016 has been a quiet but consequential part of that story — giving the Ezhava community a formal bridge to a party many had previously written off.
The psychological barrier may be the most significant thing to fall. “Till now, BJP was considered a party that cannot win an election in Kerala,” Muraleedharan acknowledges. “But 2024 proved through Suresh Gopi that we can win a Lok Sabha seat. And 2025 proved that BJP can win in Thiruvananthapuram Corporation. The voter who wanted change but was dejected — thinking that even if we want it, BJP can’t deliver — that voter is no longer sitting on the fence.”
As for whether the real fight is against the LDF or the Congress, Muraleedharan barely pauses. “There is not much difference between the two. They are alliance partners across India, except in Kerala. We have to defeat both.” It is a line that captures something of the BJP’s growing self-belief in this state — no longer content to be the third wheel in a two-front system but genuinely positioning itself as an alternative to both.
Kazhakoottam has never returned a BJP MLA. But in April 2026, with the wind at its back, a weakened opponent, and a constituency that has twice in a row placed the party first, that history may finally be due for revision.
