Kochi: When K. Surendran alighted the Kerala Express at the Thiruvalla railway station after being named the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Pathanamthitta in 2019, he was accorded a rapturous welcome. Such was the delirium that high caste Hindu women fell on the Sabarimala poster boy’s feet at will. Of course, Surendran went on to lose, but he more than doubled the vote share of the party, emerging a close third.
Come 2024, Pathanamthitta was considered — along with Thrissur and, to an extent Thiruvananthapuram as seats the BJP stood a good chance to win. For a constituency with a Hindu and Christian segment of 57 and 38 percent respectively, and Muslims constituting less than 5 percent, there were many suitors in the party with nobody having any particular ‘claim’ on it.
When P.C. George, the Kerala Congress veteran — who had burned his bridges with both the Congress and the Left — merged his Kerala Janapaksham (Secular) into the BJP, it seemed he had emerged in pole position for Pathanamthitta. And George let out enough hints that he was asked to fuse his party with the BJP as a prerequisite to win the ticket.
Aspirants galore
Not that there weren’t enough aspirants in the BJP itself: From BJP national executive committee member Kummanam Rajasekharan to Goa Governor P.S. Sreedharan Pillai, all of them were ‘willing’, given a chance, according to BJP leaders.
Yet, the biggest surprise in the first list for Kerala proved to be Anil Antony’s candidature from Pathanamthitta.
Anil’s name was doing the rounds for Ernakulam and Chalakudy, although BJP had no realistic chance there. And Anil’s surprise candidature in Pathanamthitta hasn’t gone down too well with the other hopefuls, including those from the district unit. “From Pillai Sir and Kummanam to P.C. George and Shone George or even Surendran, BJP had a plethora of leaders to choose from. No idea why they would go with Anil,” a BJP leader in Pathanamthitta told ThePrint.
The joke doing the rounds is that the BJP wants the voters to get confused between the names of Anil with Congress candidate and three-time sitting MP Anto Antony.
“Even if that were true, the leadership should have opted for (BJYM ex-national secretary) Anoop Antony and not Anil,” stated the above leader.
Vellappally Natesan’s purported role
A week before the candidature was announced, there were reports that the BJP ally Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) had reservations against the choice of P.C. George, given his controversial statements against the Ezhavas, a backward Hindu community.
This was confirmed by Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) general secretary Vellappally Natesan, whose son Thushar Vellappally is the BDJS president.
However, according to BJP leaders in Kerala and New Delhi, George being denied the seat had nothing to do with the BDJS. “Vellappally Natesan is the proverbial Ettukali Mammoonju (a comic character in Vaikom Muhammad Bashir’s satire ‘Sthalathe Pradhana Divyan’). Anil Antony’s nomination was clearly a decision of the BJP’s central leadership,” a BJP leader based in Kottayam told ThePrint.
However, the narrative in the Kerala media discourse is that BDJS/SNDP’s reservations put paid to P.C. George’s hopes. A wounded George has been going hammer and tongs at the BDJS in the past fortnight, from alleging that BDJS is selling its four seats for cash to calling Thushar Vellappally a “small boy”.
BJP’s state in-charge Prakash Javadekar visited George at his home for damage control, but the latter has already caused considerable damage to the party. On being asked about it, Thushar Vellappally refused to speak to ThePrint saying “there is nothing more to speak on it.”
On his part, Anil Antony visited George to assuage his feelings and claimed that he didn’t lobby for the seat.
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A winnable candidate
Many Kerala BJP leaders that ThePrint reached out to suggested that Sreedharan Pillai could have been the “best possible choice” in Pathanamthitta.
“Pillai sir would have secured the backing of the Nair Service Society and the various Christian denominations, especially the Malankara Orthodox Church. He is acceptable to Ezhavas, too,” said one of them.
Pillai is known to nurture ties with Christian denominations from the time he first became the Kerala BJP president and engineered the victory of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate P.C. Thomas at Muvattupuzha in 2004.
In the run-up to 2024, Pillai was seen attending the functions of at least four Christian denominations in Kottayam and Pathanamthitta.
It is also learnt that Changanacherry Archbishop Joseph Perunthottam was hosted by Pillai at Goa recently, which the latter didn’t deny. “I am very comfortable in my current position, and I don’t want to court any controversy,” Pillai laughed off.
Pillai had told the Samakalika Malayalam weekly that he was aware that the media was speculating about his nomination but nobody from the BJP approached him.
But he admitted to ThePrint that “some Christian denominations wanted me to be the candidate in Pathanamthitta.”
Anto Antony’s luck
When Pathanamthitta was carved out in 2009 from Adoor and Mavelikkara constituencies, the then Kottayam District Congress Committee president Anto Antony’s name was proposed by A.K. Antony himself. Anto not only won in 2009 but repeated the performance against veteran Congress turncoat Peelipose Thomas in 2014 and in the triangular contest with Veena George and K. Surendran in 2019.
This time, Congress strategist Sunil Kanugolu had red-flagged Pathanamthitta as of particular concern. Anti-incumbency aside, Anto was not as active as he was in the past. The Congress cleared his name only at the last minute after dilly-dallying with a proposal to replace him with Abin Varkey, a young Turk.
“I know most Kerala politicians but have never met this fellow until now,” said Joseph C. Mathew, a commentator with his base in Pathanamthitta.
However, Anto seems to have luck in his favour once again.
Apart from Anil’s candidature, the CPI(M) opting for veteran T.M. Thomas Isaac is also being seen as a massive blunder, bypassing a more winnable candidate in five-term Ranni MLA Raju Abraham. “Anto Antony should take a lottery ticket right now,” laughed a Congress leader based in Kottayam.
Isaac’s name was originally pencilled in at Ernakulam and Chalakudy (as was the case with Anil), but according to Left leaders ThePrint reached out to, he didn’t fancy his chances in these Congress strongholds and instead opted for Pathanamthitta.
Isaac reckons his contacts from his days at the Bishop Moor College will hold him in good stead, but Mathew believes that he “burned his bridges with them.”
The veteran is also facing the brunt of anti-incumbency against the Pinarayi Vijayan government, which hasn’t disbursed the social security pensions in the past seven months. As the high-profile finance minister in the first Vijayan ministry (2016-21), Isaac will be forced to field questions on pensions as his fiscal profligacy is supposed to have led to the state exchequers running dry.
The million-dollar question
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi campaigned Friday for Anil Antony in Pathanamthitta, the million-dollar question becomes how he managed to pip many heavyweights in the much-coveted seat. There are many theories doing the rounds, although none can truly explain the logic behind it.
One thing is for sure: Anil’s name was not among the three names short-listed by the Kerala unit and forwarded to the BJP’s Central Parliamentary Board. “The state unit was always aware that the candidates in Thiruvananthapuram and Pathanamthitta were going to be the central leadership’s call,” stated Yuvaraj Gokul, recently co-opted to the BJP from the Sangh Parivar.
Even Shone George reckons that it was the central leadership’s call. He told ThePrint that he was never in contention as he had asked not to be considered since his father “P.C. George was the winnable candidate”.
Because Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar ensured the joining of P.C. George in the BJP, the candidature in Pathanamthitta was regarded as a done deal initially.
A veteran BJP leader based in Thiruvananthapuram tried to second guess the choice in Anil Antony: “Look, I think the PM must have seen something in Anil that we cannot. If Anil was fielded from Ernakulam or Chalakudy, he could have ended up fourth, with Twenty20 candidates too in the fray. Being fielded from Pathanamthitta ensures that he will at least finish with a respectable vote share.”
“The Kerala BJP is too faction-ridden and is just like the Congress. Even the strong RSS in Kerala becomes inert because of that. Maybe Modi sees Anil as someone without any baggage or vested interests; someone who can be remote-controlled from Delhi and, who knows, they might give Anil a bigger assignment in future, as the experiment with Annamalai in Tamil Nadu worked out fine,” he said, when pressed specifically about Anil.
But would veterans accept such a move? “What choice would we have? It is easy to caricaturise Anil, but three decades ago (Congress MP and former CM Karunakaran’s son) K. Muraleedharan also went through such ridiculing by the Kerala press and see how strong he has emerged now,” the BJP veteran added.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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