BJP's Thiruvananthapuram win should shake up secular forces

Muchis being made by Congress and other self-described secular forces about the BJP’s victory in the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation and it claiming the mayoral post. Yet, viewed in isolation, a municipal victory is a relatively minor development. What should concern Kerala’s entrenched political players is not this single outcome, but the larger transformation quietly underway in the state’s political landscape; one that could fundamentally alter its decades-old bipolar structure.

For generations, Kerala’s politics has been vertically divided between the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF). Power alternated between these two alliances with clockwork predictability, leaving little room for a third force to emerge meaningfully. That long-standing equilibrium, however, is beginning to fray. The watershed moment came when popular Malayalam movie actor Suresh Gopi was elected to the Lok Sabha from Thrissur, becoming the first BJP Member of Parliament from Kerala. More than an individual victory, it marked the BJP’s first-ever parliamentary breakthrough in the state. For a party that had long struggled to convert vote share into seats in Kerala, the result was symbolic, and catalytic. Since then, the BJP has been nurturing far more ambitious plans for the state.

In its quest to become a truly pan-Indian party, the BJP leadership, spearheaded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, has invested sustained political capital, organisational effort, and narrative-building in regions once considered impermeable. The party’s improving performance in local body elections, including its gains in Thiruvananthapuram, is less an end in itself than evidence of groundwork bearing fruit.

Historically, Kerala’s electoral arithmetic was thought to be relatively stable. The UDF was perceived as relying heavily on Muslim and Christian voters, who together accounted for nearly 45 per cent of the population according to the 2011 Census, while the LDF drew substantial support from Hindu voters, trade unions, and the Left’s traditional base. This rough alignment allowed both fronts to calculate their prospects with reasonable certainty.

That certainty is now eroding. After two consecutive terms in office, the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government is confronting visible anti-incumbency. Conventional wisdom suggests this should favour the Congress-led UDF in the next assembly elections. Yet the LDF’s own anxiety is evident. The Chief Minister’s controversial remarks on the Karnataka government’s bulldozing illegal housing in Bengaluru, widely perceived as aimed at Muslim voters, were unprecedented for a sitting chief minister commenting on another state’s internal administrative decisions. The political intent behind the intervention was hard to miss.

While both the LDF and UDF are expending enormous energy to retain and expand their respective vote banks, the BJP finds itself in a comparatively advantageous position. It is not burdened by incumbency, nor tied to legacy expectations. Instead, it can position itself as both an alternative and a disruptor. Recent political history from elsewhere in India offers cautionary parallels. In Tripura, the CPM governed uninterrupted for 25 years until 2018, when the BJP-IPFT coalition swept to power, effectively dismantling the Left’s once-formidable organisational base. Much of the Communist vote bank appeared to migrate en masse to the BJP. In West Bengal, too, the decline of the Left has coincided with the BJP emerging as the principal challenger to the Trinamool Congress.

The BJP would hope to replicate this trajectory in Kerala by attracting a significant portion of the LDF’s traditional Hindu support. Even a partial consolidation, rather than a wholesale shift, could dramatically reshape electoral outcomes in a state accustomed to close margins. If not by 2026, such a realignment over the next few years could transform Kerala from a reliable “red” state into one increasingly tinged with saffron.

Kerala is not an isolated ambition for the saffron brigade. Having formed governments multiple times in Karnataka, participated in coalition politics in Andhra Pradesh, built momentum in Telangana, and set its sights on Tamil Nadu, the BJP’s broader objective is unmistakable: political dominance across South India. For a party whose ideological project is as important as its electoral success, southern expansion is the final frontier.

It is this larger picture that should give pause to secular and regional forces alike. The question is no longer whether the BJP can win a municipal corporation or a parliamentary seat in Kerala, but whether the state’s traditional political binaries can withstand a sustained, well-resourced challenge from a party determined to redraw India’s political map.

(The writer is a political observer based in Hyderabad)