BJP attempt to poach CPI(M) dissidents still an elusive holy grail

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) State unit has attracted a motley crew of disaffected Congress leaders and workers to its fold. However, the elusive political holy grail for the BJP is a defection from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] to its side.

The BJP has left no stone unturned to break the jinx and gain a propaganda advantage over the CPI(M) in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. BJP’s Kerala incharge Prakash Javadekar put the political rumour mill on overdrive by hosting S. Rajendran, former CPI(M) legislator from Idukki, in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Mr. Rajendran, who returned to Idukki on Thursday, told local reporters that he would campaign for the Left Democratic Front (LDF). He claimed that he had gone to New Delhi to raise the issues faced by plantation workers when someone invited him to meet Mr. Javadekar. The impromptu exchange of pleasantries held “no political ramifications.”

Mr. Rajendran has deep pockets of influence among Tamilspeaking people in the Devikulam, Peerumade, and Udumbanchola areas. He was elected to the Assembly from the Devikulam constituency in 2006, 2011, and 2016. The CPI(M) suspended him from the party for a year in 2022 on the charge of plotting to scuttle A. Raja’s chances in the 2021 Assembly polls. He had been at odds with the CPI(M) district leadership, in which M.M. Mani, MLA, allegedly has an outsized say.

Since then, Mr. Rajendran has stepped back from frontline politics. However, of late, he had sought to put the CPI(M) on the tenterhooks by stating that the BJP leadership had approached him when the party’s State president K. Surendran’s ‘Kerala Padayatra’ reached Idukki. He appeared to have tightened the screws on the CPI (M) by visiting Mr. Javadekar, perhaps in a bid to bargain with the ruling party from a point of strength. The BJP reckoned that Mr. Rajendran’s “defection” would be a major scalp for the party. It could deliver a big blow to the CPI(M), which projected itself as an impregnable antiSangh fortress. The CPI(M) has sought to woo secular and minority votes by accusing the Congress of being permeable to the BJP’s inducements.

‘Will campaign’

CPI(M) State secretary M.V. Govindan told reporters in Kannur on Thursday that Mr. Rajendran would campaign for the LDF in Idukki. He said the party wanted him back in the organisational fold.

Mr. Mani dismissed the import of Mr. Rajendran’s onetoone with Mr. Javadekar and said he perceived “nothing unusual.”