Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Further dip in votes polled by BJP

Roy Mathew

Party can take solace that it has not been accused of sale of votes

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: There is only one silver lining for the BJP in the just concluded Assembly elections: nobody is accusing it of having shifted or sold its votes to either the UDF or the LDF so far.

The drop in BJP votes this time compared to the 2001 Assembly elections is marginal — just a quarter of a percentage point.

The party had won just over five per cent of the valid votes polled in the 2001 elections. Now its vote share has dipped to about 4.75 per cent of the valid votes polled.

This is indeed a sharp fall from the 10.39 per cent votes garnered by the party in the State in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. But, that was when the party was in power at the Centre and before infighting in the party broke out in the open.

Allegations about sale of votes in the Lok Sabha byelections from Thiruvananthapuram last year destroyed the credibility of the party in the State. The allegations also led to rift between the party leadership and the RSS.

The RSS was not as active as in the past in campaigning for the party candidates this time. Even when they participated, it was in support of a select number of candidates.

The BJP campaign machinery practically did not work in many constituencies. Though an independent Jyodeendrakumar was fielded in Thiruvananthapuram East constituency with the support of Hindu organisations, he could not even garner the votes obtained by the BJP candidate B.K. Sekhar in 2001. His score was just 10,600 votes against Mr. Sekhar's 14,000.

The party could perform no better than in the previous elections in its strongholds of Manjeswaram and Kasaragod also.

Only former Union Minister O. Rajagopal's presence helped the party to improve its vote share in Palakkad. Rajagopal polled about 27,700 votes against just over 12,000 votes polled by the party candidate in 2001.

Most of its candidates across the State lost their deposits.

The party's performance had been coming down marginally in the Assembly elections in the Nineties also.

This is one of the reasons why nobody is attributing the drop this time to any `sale of votes'. Besides, the victory margins this time are higher than in the past that none could attribute the victories solely to hijacking of BJP votes.

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