Let the numbers speak first, because they speak more plainly than any politician in Kerala will. In Manjeshwaram assembly constituency — the northernmost seat in the state, bordering Karnataka, a seat where the RSS has shed blood and the Sangh parivar has buried workers — the Left Democratic Front’s vote tally over the past fifteen years reads as follows:
LDF Vote Tally — Manjeshwaram Assembly
2011 (Assembly) → 35,067
2016 (Assembly) → 42,565 ← K. Surendran loses by 89 votes
2019 (Lok Sabha) → 32,796
2021 (Assembly) → 40,639 ← Surendran loses by 745 votes
2024 (Lok Sabha) → 30,156
2026 (Assembly) → 21,212 ← Collapsed. 21,000 votes vanished.
Now let’s compare the above LDF Votes vanishing with Muslim League/UDF
UDF / Muslim League Vote Tally — Manjeshwaram
Previous highest (Lok Sabha) → 74,437
2026 (Assembly) → 96,948 ← Jumped by 22,511 votes
2026 (Assembly): BJP / K. Surendran → 67,696 ← Highest ever for BJP in this seat
Now ask yourself: where did those 21,000 missing Left led LDF votes go? They did not stay home. Kerala’s overall turnout in 2026 was high. Those voters went to the booths. They voted. And they did not vote Left. The Muslim League’s vote share in Manjeshwaram jumped by over twenty-two thousand votes in a single election — from 74,437 to 96,948 — while the LDF simultaneously shed nearly twenty thousand votes from its 2021 tally.
Yes, the LDF cross-voted in favour of the Congress led UDF and the Muslim League to prevent a BJP victory.
This is not coincidence. This is not organic electoral movement. This is a managed, premeditated transfer of votes from the CPIM to the Indian Union Muslim League, engineered for one purpose: to stop K. Surendran from entering the Kerala Legislative Assembly.
CPIM’s Manjeshwaram Turn: From Ideology to Vote Brokerage
The treachery of this arrangement must be named without euphemism. The CPIM, which boasts that was founded on the stated principles of scientific socialism, secularism, and the emancipation of the working class regardless of religion, has in Manjeshwaram reduced itself to a vote broker for an organisation — the Muslim League — whose foundational ideology is the political separateness of Indian Muslims.
The same CPIM that condemns the RSS as ‘communal’ has, in Manjeshwaram across two decades, functioned as the Muslim League’s silent electoral contractor whenever the BJP threatened to win.
Look at the pattern with the clarity it demands. In 2016, when K. Surendran first ran in Manjeshwaram with genuine winning momentum, the LDF’s vote suddenly spiked to 42,565 — its highest ever in this constituency. Surendran lost by 89 votes. Eighty-nine. A number so precise, so surgically close, that it suggests not an election but a managed outcome.
Manjeshwaram: The Pattern itself Explains!
In 2021, when Surendran ran again and the BJP’s support base had grown further, the LDF again polled 40,699 — well above its natural floor — and Surendran again lost, this time by 745 votes. Both times, enough Left votes stayed Left to deny BJP the seat. Both times, when there was no BJP threat of comparable magnitude, the LDF vote fell back to its natural level — the thirties and lower.
In 2026, the BJP’s strength in Manjeshwaram had grown beyond a threshold that simple Left consolidation could defeat. Surendran polled 67,696 — the highest BJP tally this constituency has ever seen. The LDF, no longer able to hold its own votes in sufficient numbers to act as the spoiler, changed strategy. It did not consolidate. It transferred.
The CPIM’s vote collapsed to 21,212 — the lowest in fifteen years — and the Muslim League surged to 96,948. The arithmetic is transparent: approximately 21,000 votes moved from red to green. Not because those voters changed their ideology. Because their party instructed them to.
Against the consolidation of Hindu society in Keralam
The RSS perspective on this arrangement is not merely political outrage, though outrage is entirely warranted. It is civilisational clarity. The CPIM and the Muslim League represent, at their ideological cores, two forces that have historically worked — separately and sometimes together — against the consolidation of Hindu society in Kerala. Ironically, the seat tallies of the CP(I)M and the Muslim League are nearly identical—while the CPI(M) secured 26 seats, the Muslim League won 22.
The Left does so through the language of class, the Muslim League through the language of community. In Manjeshwaram, they do it together, through the language of numbers. Their shared enemy is not poverty or inequality. Their shared enemy is K. Surendran — which is to say, their shared enemy is an organised Hindu political assertion in the most contested corner of Keralam.
RSS Workers have been Killed, Sangh’s Shakhas have been Attacked
What gives this analysis its sharpest edge is the contrast. Surendran’s 67,696 in 2026 is a remarkable number. It was achieved against a consolidated anti-BJP vote that crossed 96,000. It was achieved in a constituency where RSS workers have been killed, where the Sangh’s shakhas have been attacked, where the social and institutional machinery of both Left and League has been arrayed against it for decades.
That the BJP came within striking distance even under these conditions tells the RSS not that Kerala is lost — but that Kerala, like Bengal before it, is merely late.
In 2016, Bengal gave BJP three seats. Manjeshwaram in 2016 gave BJP a 89-vote loss manufactured in a counting room. Ten years of Sangh work later, Bengal has 200 seats. The CPIM and the Muslim League can count votes. But they cannot count years. And in Manjeshwaram, the Sangh is counting.
