After a long polling season, the 17th Lok Sabha Elections culminated with a sweeping win for the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies, together winning 353 seats. BJP had been able to make major inroads in West Bengal, Odisha, Tripura, and to some extent in Telangana with a vote share surpassing 50%. However, the strategic money and muscle power of BJP campaigns, and the ‘Modi wave’ failed to make its mark in Kerala. Of the twenty seats in Kerala, BJP failed to gain even a single constituency or a significant vote share.
The BJP’s campaign strategy in Kerala was hinged characteristically on a temple issue, led by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh resulting in violence in many occasions. From September 2018, with the passing of the Supreme Court Verdict against the ban on women of menstruating age from entering the hill shrine in Sabarimala, BJP had seized it as a ‘golden opportunity’ to mobilize Hindu voters in the state and designed its ‘game plan’ to make inroads in the state by centering the Sabarimala issue.
The Sabarimala agitation saw huge turnout of party workers at the protests, frequent police clashes, attacks on women who came to pray in the temple, and organized hartals, keeping the issue in the spotlight for seven months leading to the polling in April and May.
However, such exploitation of the court-verdict during the campaigns to capture and consolidate the Hindu votes, which saw the presence of celebrities, retired bureaucrats, police chiefs, and Sangh operatives, failed to turn it into winnable votes. The election results indicated zero votes for the party with its vote sharing being 12.93%, mere two point increase from last Lok Sabha elections.
One of the main reasons attributed to the failure of BJP in the state has been that the votes galvanised on Sabarimala issue were accrued by the Congress party. The congress and its allies in the state in the state received an electoral boost, with 19 out of 20 seats won by United Democratic Front, and Congress alone winning 15 seats, making it Congress’s best performance in Lok Sabha elections. During the verdict on Sabarimala issue, while the Left-led state government promised to implement the verdict, BJP and congress, both demanded the ‘preservation of tradition’ in the temple.
The ground report by Scroll in April, predicted that Congress has major chances of consolidating the Hindu votes over the temple issue, as the Hindu voters saw it as a tactical decision to defeat the Left led government. This is evident from nine candidates from the Congress led United Democratic Front winning by margins of over one lakh and UDF gaining 47.2% of the total vote share.
The voting pattern in Kerala for the 2019 elections revealed larger voter turnouts in constituencies where BJP has larger electoral odds. The trend also revealed that people turning out in larger number voted for Congress alliance or the Left government. In contrast to the 2014 elections, the larger voter turnout did not benefit the BJP.
The presence of Rahul Gandhi campaigning from Wayanad constituency also aided in the consolidation of the minority votes in the state.
The strategic voting of the people of the Kerala for the Congress, while on one hand ensured the defeat of BJP, it also ended in the defeat of the Left in Kerala.
The decisive support for the Congress consolidated over the Sabarimala issue, however raises important questions regarding the consolidation of votes based on religious issue in the state. Can this be considered a failure for Hindutva forces despite BJP losing the seats in Kerala? While the Congress benefitted from the Hindu votes these Lok Sabha elections, the dismal future for the Left and the opportune future for the Hindutva are to be looked out.
