Team News Riveting
Kochi, March 29
Thrissur assembly constituency would probably be the only segment where the candidates of major political parties in the fray had lost the last election they had contested.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had fielded actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi as its candidate while Congress has pitted Padmaja Venugopal against him. The CPI candidate, P Balacharan is also trying his electoral fate from the constituency that will see a three-cornered contest when Kerala goes to the polls next month.
When Suresh Gopi claimed “I’m taking Thrissur” ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he had probably not expected the voters mood. The constituency dealt him a blow by electing UDF candidate TN Prathapan. The 60-year-old actor-turned-politician settled for third position with 2,93,822 votes.
The Congress-led UDF has fielded a familiar face from the seat; Padmaja Venugopal, daughter of former CM K Karunakaran. Like her rival from the BJP, she had contested from Thrissur and lost in the last election.
In the 2016 Assembly polls, Padmaja came second after she lost to incumbent Agriculture Minister and CPI MLA VS Sunil Kumar by 6,987 votes. But this time around, Sunil Kumar is not contesting the elections and the party has given ticket to P Balachandran who had contested from Thrissur in 2011 and lost to Congress’ Therambil Ramakrishnan.
The constituency with three “losers” is going to witness an interesting contest. Once a bastion of Congress, Thrissur had elected Ramakrishnan for the five consecutive terms as MLA from the assembly constituency between 1991 and 2011. Sunil Kumar broke the chain by trouncing him in 2016.
Ironically, neither Ramakrishnan nor Sunil Kumar are now in the race. The Manorama-VMR survey had predicted that Thrissur and Manalur Assembly constituencies would be retained by the LDF, which won 12 out 13 seats in the district in 2016. However, the UDF is likely to win in five constituencies.
Set aside the surveys, the BJP candidate could not be ignored this time. An analysis of the parliamentary election results shows that in the Thrissur Assembly segment alone, the actor polled second after racing ahead of LDF’s Rajaji Mathew Thomas. On March 28, Palm Sunday, the actor also visited several churches in the town as part of his campaign, in order to appeal to the minority Christian population as well.
However, in Thrissur, voters believe that Suresh Gopi has good chances of securing votes. “He is supposed to be very helpful and he has done a lot of work for people here in this constituency. Which makes me feel that he might have a chance,” a resident of East Fort told a news portal.
