Thrissur’s triangular tussle heading for a close finish

Thrissur is witnessing an evenly matched contest for the Lok Sabha polls with all the three major candidates of Congress, BJP and CPI in a neck-and-neck battle.

The constituency is much talked about since the BJP fielded actorturned politician Suresh Gopi to counter the influence of both Congress-led UDF and CPM-led LDF, who have interchangeably won it in multiple times in the past over seven decades. The BJP is banking on his charisma and popularity to open the party’s account in the State.

He is pitted against former Agriculture Minister in the previous LDF government, VS Sunilkumar of CPI and K Muralidharan of Congress, who is the son of veteran Congress leader K Karunakaran.

This is the second time Gopi is trying his luck in the Thrissur constituency which did not favour him in 2019. He still managed to garner nearly 30 per cent of the polled votes despite late announcement of his candidature giving him hardly 20 days for the election campaign.

THE MODI MAGIC

BJP seems to have made amends this time with Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding his first roadshow in Thrissur. The PM made another visit to the constituency to attend the

VALLEY VOTES

wedding of Gopi’s daughter at Guruvayoor Srikrishna Temple.

The first choice of the Congress for Thrissur was its sitting MP TN Prathapan, but the party had a rethink after the defection of K Padmaja Venugopal, daughter of the late K Karunakaran. It then projected her brother K Muralidharan by shifting him from Vadakara. With the arrival of Muralidharan, the contest has become more intense.

Though the local stalwart VS Sunilkumar of LDF is quite popular in the constituency, political observers feel the ghost of the Karuvannur Cooperative Bank scam is likely to haunt him. It has become a major issue in the UDF campaign especially after the PM raised the issue of the ruling LDF government being accused of irregularities and payment default.

All the candidates are trying to woo the dominant Catholic community in Thrissur which accounts for 35 per cent of the region’s population. About 16 per cent of the voters are Muslims.

SWING STATE

The Thrissur Lok Sabha constituency has a reputation of causing electoral upsets. The defeat of K Karunakaran, the veteran Congress leader, in 1996 by a thin margin of less than 2,000 votes in his pocketborough came as a shocker in the political circles at the time.

The parliamentary constituency consists of assembly constituencies such as Thrissur, Ollur, Pudukkad, Irinjalakuda, Manalur, Nattika and Guruvayur.

In 2019, TN Prathapan of Congress had 39.83 per cent of vote share when he defeated Rajaji Mathew Thomas of CPI.