Kerala BJP chief Surendran pitted against Rahul

Kochi: Announcing candidates for the remaining four seats in Kerala, the BJP has fielded its state chief K Surendran in the high-profile Wayanad constituency against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Scholar and former vice-chancellor of Sree Sankara Sanskrit University, K S Radhakrishnan, and actor-turned-politician G Krishnakumar will contest from the Ernakulam and Kollam constituencies respectively, the party announced on Sunday.

T N Sarasu, former government college principal, would seek electoral luck from Alathur in the northern Palakkad district.

The BJP is striving to break the decades-old bipolar politics dominated by the Congress-led UDF and the CPI(M)-led LDF in Kerala.

The party had earlier announced the candidates for 12 seats. Its ally BDJS will contest four seats in the state.

With the surprise candidature of Surendran in Wayanad, a traditional Congress bastion, the BJP is trying to give a fitting reply to its opponents by fielding a strong candidate against Rahul Gandhi. CPI's Annie Raja is the candidate of the state's ruling Left in the constituency.

Surendran, the face of the saffron party's fierce agitations against the entry of young women into Sabarimala years ago, has been serving as the president of the state unit of the BJP since 2020.

Hailing from Ulleyeri in Kozhikode district, Kunnummel Surendran, who began his career as Wayanad district president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, had unsuccessfully contested from Pathanamthitta in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Though he was fielded from Konni in the assembly bypoll in the same year, he couldn't make it.