 "LS polls: With Suresh Gopi in fray, BJP hopes to open account in Kerala")
Draped in crisp white mundu and vesht, Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Guruvayur’s Sreekrishna Temple in Kerala’s Thrissur district in January this year.
The occasion? He was there to attend the wedding of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and popular Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi’s daughter Bhagya.
Modi took centre stage during the ceremony and participated in the ‘Kanyadaanam’, a ritual which is usually performed by the bride’s father.
After blessing the couple, the Prime Minister left for Thriprayar Sree Ramaswamy temple, which is a 45-minute drive from Guruvayur.
Modi’s active participation in the wedding of Gopi’s daughter underscores the importance he attaches to the Thrissur constituency, which goes to polls on April 26.
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It also highlights the level of confidence and trust Modi reposes in Gopi’s candidature, who at the peak of his cinematic career in the 1990s, had given a stiff competition to the reigning Malayalam superstars Mammooty and Mohanlal in terms of sheer popularity and box-office numbers.
The BJP is now hoping to cash in on Gopi’s mass appeal, which he had cultivated while essaying the roles of moustache-twirling cops in several runaway Malayalam super hits like Commissioner, FIR, and Ekalavyan.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Gopi finished a distant third in the three-corner race. But he bagged close to 300,000 votes, which helped the BJP increase its vote share to an impressive 28.2 per cent from 11.1 per cent it garnered in 2014.
The party awarded Gopi with a berth in the Rajya Sabha. And after his term ended in 2022, Modi hand-picked him to galvanise his party’s fortunes in Thrissur.
Gopi had started his political career as an SFI cadre while graduating from Fatima Mata National College in Kollam. His family was traditionally close to former Kerala Chief Minister and veteran Congressman K Karunakaran.
That political ambivalence is now a thing of the past.
“Gopi has been hand-picked by Modiji for the Thrissur constituency. Our Prime Minister adores him for his humble and straightforward manner,” a BJP leader from Thrissur tells Business Standard.
Gopi, 65, faces a three-way fight. He is facing veteran Congress leader K Muraleedharan, incidentally the son of Karunakaran, and CPI stalwart VS Sunil Kumar.
Interestingly, Muraleedharan was the Vatakara MP in 2019. Congress replaced TN Prathapan, the sitting MP from Thrissur, with him. The move came close on the heels of Muraleedharan’s sister Padmaja Venugopal shifting to the BJP camp.
“The Congress also got jittery after the BJP fielded Gopi from Thrissur. The Karunakaran family is also based here, so they decided to field him opposite the actor-politician,” A Jayshankar, noted political analyst and advocate of Kerala High Court said.
The BJP is yet to win a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala and is pinning its hopes on the Hindu voters, which constitute around 58 per cent of the district’s population, to finally open its account in the state.
These days the actor-politician is on a temple-hopping spree.
“We (BJP) are rallying behind Suresh Gopi. Kerala knows him for his squeaky-clean image. He has been instrumental in leading several philanthropic projects and is the champion of the poor,” senior BJP leader George Kurien told Business Standard.
Kurien believes there is another factor that will firmly tilt the scales in favour of Gopi in this election: women voters.
“He has a tremendous fan following among women voters across age groups,” he adds.
The BJP is also trying hard to woo the Christian voters that constitute a shade over 20 per cent of the electorate.
Earlier this year, BJP’s Kerala unit kick-started the ‘Sneha yatra’ programme to win the Christian voters.
Apart from Gopi’s temple run, he has also embarked on several trips to churches across the district, meeting their leaders as part of the party’s Christian outreach.
The shoddy manner in which this year’s Thrissur Pooram was conducted, and the alleged police interference in the rituals have turned into a political slugfest, which could have a bearing on how Thrissur votes.
Gopi termed it a ‘Sabarimala-type’ attack. For the first time in history, the display of fireworks, one of the major attractions of the event, was held the next day.
“The Thrissur Pooram is an emotive issue for the people of Thrissur. The fiasco will have an impact on the way people vote. My sense is that it will boomerang against the ruling LDF regime,” Jayshankar claims.
As the voting day nears, several billboards installed in and around Thrissur carry the picture of PM Modi with this caption: “A Union Minister for Thrissur is Modi’s guarantee.”
Can the man who broke the backs of countless villains in Malayalam films help the BJP finally break the duck in Kerala?
Only time will tell.
“There is a strong anti-incumbency wave against the LDF. It’s going to be a tight two-way contest between Muraleedharan and Gopi. In such a scenario, I think 15 per cent of Muslim votes in the electorate could go to Muraleedharan,” Jayshankar added.
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