Banking on the Sabarimala storm, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strongly aspired to open its account in Kerala, at least in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. However, not only did the party face a rout, but the poor performance of its candidates, including some of its heavyweights such as Union Minister of State Alphons Kannanthanam, Bharatiya Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) chief Thushar Vellapally and actor-politician Suresh Gopi, has come as a surprise.
Among the 20 NDA candidates in Kerala who contested the elections this year, 13 candidates failed to get the minimum number of votes as stipulated by the Election Commission of India (EC).
Among the 13 candidates were Kannanthanam, who was fielded from Ernakulam constituency, and Thushar Vellappally, who was chosen to contest from Wayanad, a day after Congress President Rahul Gandhi announced his candidature in the constituency. Since they failed to get minimum votes, they will lose the security deposit they made while filing nominations from their respective constituencies.
According to section 34 of Representation of The People Act, 1951, every candidate, who is contesting the Lok Sabha election, has to make a security deposit of Rs 25,000. Also, as per the rules of the EC, if a candidate fails to get a minimum of one-sixth (or 16.6%) of the total valid votes cast in the constituency, the security deposit goes to the treasury of the EC.
Alphons Kannanthanam is the second union minister from the BJP in the state, after O Rajagopal. By fielding Kannanthanam, BJP had hoped to make the fight a triangular one in Ernakulam, which also saw UDF’s winning candidate Hibi Eden and LDF’s P Rajeev.
But as per the EC data, the results show that Kannanthanam still needed more than 23,000 votes to constitute at least one-sixth of the total votes. Out of the 9.6 lakh votes polled in Ernakulam constituency, Kannanthanam could only get 1.3 lakh votes.
It may be recalled that the minister made news for all the wrong reasons since the beginning of his election campaign - from visiting a courtroom to ask for votes, to boarding a bus and getting off at the wrong constituency in Chalakudy. The religious aspect, which was factored in while fielding Kannanthanam in a Christian-dominated constituency, too, failed to work in favour of the BJP.
Meanwhile, the vote share of Thushar Vellapally in Wayanad shows that he was not even a star player in the constituency. Thushar received a meagre 78,816 votes among the total 10.9 lakh votes polled in the constituency. Rahul Gandhi picked up a hefty 7,06,367 votes. Thushar had to get at least 1.8 lakh votes to get back the election security deposit.
Thushar Vellappally, the president of Bharath Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) party, an ally of NDA, was initially set to contest from Thrissur. But the declaration of Rahul Gandhi’s candidature in Wayanad, pushed the BJP to field Thushar against the Congress chief, anticipating he would be in a better opposition to take on Rahul. But evidently, the results show that this strategy did not work.
The other 11 NDA candidates who did not make it to the minimum vote share mark and lost their security deposits are Ravisha Thanthri Kuntar from Kasaragod; CK Padmanabhan from Kannur; VK Sajeevan from Vadakara; Prakash Babu from Kozhikode; Unnikrishnan from Malappuram; Rema from Ponnani; TV Babu from Alathur; AN Radhakrishnan from Chalakkudy; Biju Krishnan from Idukki; Thazhava Sahadevan from Mavelikkara; and KV Sabu from Kollam.
The seven other NDA candidates just managed to cross the 16.6% mark of the required minimum vote share. This includes