LS polls: PM Modi to address rallies in central and south Kerala today

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all set to address public rallies in Kerala on Monday as part of the BJP's electoral campaign for the Lok Sabha elections.

PM Modi will take part in the public meeting at Kunnamangalam in the Alathur constituency in Thrissur District. He will attend the election campaign for NDA candidates TN Sarasu and Suresh Gopi, contesting in Alathur and Thrissur, respectively.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had fielded actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi from Thrissur and recorded a 28.2 percent vote share, as against its 2014 candidate K. P. Sreesan's 11.15 percent.

After that, the PM will reach Kattakkada in Thiruvananthapuram District, where he will campaign for V Muraleedharan and Rajeev Chandrashekar, the two union ministers contesting under the NDA banner from Attingal and Thiruvananthapuram constituencies, respectively.

All 20 Lok Sabha seats in the state go to the polls in the second phase on April 16.

In the Assembly polls, the party won only once from Nemam in Thiruvananthapuram district, where O Rajagopal had won in 2016. This seat has been the only one among the 20 Lok Sabha seats where the party had managed to come in second in 2014.

In the 2019 polls, the BJP's Kummanam Rajasekharan had won 31.3 per cent votes, the highest among what the BJP got in the 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state.However, Chandrasekhar's plunge into the capital fray has turned it into a triangular affair, which will be one of the most watched battles in the general elections.

The BJP has never been able to win a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, while the BJP's tally of MLAs in Kerala dwindled to nil in 2021 from the lone seat it won in 2016. Contesting 115 of 140 seats in the 2021 Kerala assembly elections, it secured 11.3 percent of the total votes polled, but failed to win even a single seat.

The BJP's vote share in Kerala was highest in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, when it managed to secure around 13 percent of the total votes polled.

The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) went on to win 19 of Kerala's 20 seats that year.

This is Modi's sixth visit to the state this year. He will later proceed to Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, where he will address a public meeting in the evening.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will also arrive in Kerala for a two-day tour and hold a UDF rally in northern Kozhikode in the evening, and take part in several programmes in his constituency over the next couple of days.

The former Congress president will be up against senior CPI leader Annie Raja and K Surendran, the Kerala BJP chief from Wayanad.