Poll pulse: Two Thiruvananthapuram seats hold key to Kerala BJP plan

Nemom and Kazhakkoottam emerge as key battlegrounds as BJP looks to convert recent gains into Assembly seats amid voter churn and local issues

Shashidharan Nair, 73, is glum.

 

He runs a shop that sells tender coconuts 600 metres from Vizhinjam International Seaport, Thiruvananthapuram, and the port hasn’t helped much in saving his flagging business.

 

Nair’s business suffered after a national highway, about 1.5 km from his shop, became operational some years ago.

 

“Earlier, vehicles on their way to the Kanyakumari district used to stop by, and I used to sell 50 tender coconuts by afternoon. Today I just sold seven. Occasionally, some officers working in the port come and have a few tender coconuts,” said Nair.

 

When asked about the elections, Nair said he wants the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) to win.

 

“The Left Democratic Front (LDF) has been ruling for 10 years; let someone else get in the saddle. Even the National Democratic Alliance should get a chance,” said Nair.

 

Rajan, an autorickshaw driver in Vizhinjam, sounded similarly desolate. “There is no change. Once in a while, if truck drivers want to buy lunch, they take a ride.” 

The first vessel to Vizhinjam Port, India’s first deepwater transhipment port, arrived in October 2023, followed by trial operations in July 2024. Commercial operations began in December 2024, and the port was officially commissioned in May 2025 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

 

The port is a fully trans-shipment container terminal, where cargo containers are transferred from one ship to another, and there are currently no gateway operations (ship-to-land cargo).

 

“Unfortunately, there has been no visible impact of the port till now in changing people’s lives or the economic development of the local area. Until gateway container operations begin, the benefits are unlikely to trickle down,” said Elias John, president of the Vizhinjam Mother Port Action Council, a non-government organisation that championed the cause of the port for over three decades.

 

M Omanakuttan, another Vizhinjam resident whose land was taken for the port, sounded optimistic.

 

“Some of us might have been inconvenienced, but this port is a national asset. My property was taken over in 2018 for the port. For the land, I received compensation of ₹1.3 crore. Since we had a house on that property, we received an additional ₹16 lakh and land elsewhere. The new plot was allotted a week before the elections were announced. We were asked to stay at our old place until we got the land, but I had moved out earlier,” said Omanakuttan.

 

A senior official of Vizhinjam International Seaport Ltd (VISL), a company owned by the Government of Kerala and incorporated to implement the port project, said more than 700 jobs were created within the port.

 

“About 60 per cent of the employees are from Kerala and mostly from Thiruvananthapuram itself; around 40 per cent of the employees are from the Vizhinjam area,” said the official.

 

When asked about the lack of development in Vizhinjam after the port’s inauguration, the official said it was unfair to say that and added that the port had made a mark on the global maritime map.

 

“As we talk now, we have taken in more than 800 vessels, and we have handled around 1.75 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of cargo. Our original target was around 1 million TEUs capacity annually, and we crossed 1 million TEUs within the first 10 months. One of the intentions of strategically positioning this as a trans-shipment hub was to ensure that Vizhinjam becomes a port that the country and the world take note of. The next step is definitely opening our gates on the land side as well, so we will be starting that soon after the elections are done, once the model code of conduct is lifted,” said the official.

 

The Vizhinjam International Seaport was held up as one of the LDF’s big achievements. It was commissioned after being in limbo for many years and facing multiple headwinds.

 

Just months later, in December 2025, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wrested the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation from the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), ending the Left’s 45-year reign in the local body.

 

Four Assembly constituencies — Nemom, Vattiyoorkavu, Thiruvananthapuram, and Kazhakkoottam — and four wards in the Kovalam constituency, where Vizhinjam Port is situated, come within the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation limits. Two of them, Nemom and Kazhakkoottam, are central to the BJP’s plans to make a dent in the current elections. The BJP at present has one Lok Sabha member but no Assembly member from the state.

 

“Most of the assembly constituencies in Kerala have become triangular fights. The BJP has become stronger in Kerala after the recent parliamentary and local-body elections. We have models of effective governance in other states and the Centre to show. We want to capture power,” said V V Rajesh, mayor, Thiruvananthapuram.

 

About 30 km from Vizhinjam Port is Technopark, India’s first information technology (IT) park, where 80,000 people work.

 

Billboards of a beaming Pinarayi Vijayan, chief minister, greet you every now and then as you travel along national highways. Every billboard has the slogan “Mattarundu LDF allathe?” — Who else but the LDF? — and below the slogan is a one-line description of an achievement of the state government. One billboard spoke about the eradication of extreme poverty, one about rehabilitation work after the Wayanad landslides, and another about ₹50,000 crore worth of roads and bridges built across the state.

 

Vijaya Stores, outside Technopark’s Phase 1 campus, is a small shop where techies come for a quick smoke and a sip of soft drink. Sivan (name changed on request), who has been working for the past four years at a firm based in Technopark, is hoping for a change in government.

 

“I don’t think the common man is benefiting. I am building a house, and the red tape is frustrating. I am still privileged and can find a way through this. But it will be a nightmare for those at the bottom of the pyramid. I am not a BJP supporter, but I am curious to know what a third alternative will look like,” he said.

 

Jeevan Varghese, partner at Lexfins360, a corporate advisory firm that works with IT companies in Kerala, said the lax attitude of government officials is slowing down major projects.

 

“Another persistent issue is the presence of headload workers. You cannot move anything without paying nokkukuli (gawking wages). There are eight to 10 unions involved, which complicates matters further,” said Varghese.

 

Technopark is part of the Kazhakkoottam constituency and is facing a three-cornered contest among the current legislator, Kadakampally Surendran of the CPI(M), V Muraleedharan of the BJP, and T Saratchandra Prasad of the Congress.

 

The Sabarimala case of gold theft is a hot campaign topic in Kazhakkoottam. The case centres on allegations of theft of gold from the Sabarimala temple in 2019 during a refurbishment. Kadakampally Surendran was the minister for Devaswom, which is responsible for administering numerous Hindu temples in Kerala and their assets, at the time.

 

“The Sabarimala theft is a major issue in this election. The biggest obstacle that the BJP was facing till recently was that people were not very confident that it was a party that could win. So, we were very close to the winning margin but were unable to win. But the victory of Suresh Gopi in Thrissur in the 2024 general elections and the victory in the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation have given the party workers a morale boost. More than that, people now look at the BJP as a party that can win,” said V Muraleedharan, a former Union minister and the BJP’s candidate in Kazhakkoottam.

 

The transformation of KG Marar Bhavan, the BJP’s headquarters in Kerala, from a modest structure resembling a traditional Kerala home to a seven-storey building is a testament to the BJP’s electoral ambitions in the state. The current building has giant conference rooms, rooms and dormitories for visiting party workers, and swanky offices for the state leadership.

 

“There is also a huge resource gap between the BJP and parties like ours. We need to assess voters, understand their concerns, and develop solutions. Technological changes have made it easier for people to access government welfare measures, and they no longer need the help of a local politician to do so. Thiruvananthapuram is rapidly urbanising. The middle class and floating voters play a key role. The composition of voters is changing; many high-rises have come up, and it is difficult to reach out to people in those spaces,” said T N Seema, former Rajya Sabha member and in charge of the CPI(M)’s election in the Kovalam constituency.

 

KG Marar Bhavan falls in the Thiruvananthapuram Central constituency. Here, BJP leader Karamana Jayan is locking horns with Sudheer Karamana, an actor contesting as an independent candidate backed by the LDF, and CP John of the Communist Marxist Party (CMP), a UDF ally. Antony Raju of Janadhipathya Kerala Congress, an LDF ally, won the seat last time but was disqualified as an MLA after he was found guilty of tampering with material evidence in a case. 

Napier Museum is a popular walking spot for Thiruvananthapuram residents. In the mornings, one can see hordes of people catching up with the latest gossip while taking a stroll, and lovers merrily chirping away. On a Saturday morning, the place was less bustling than usual due to the sweltering heat. 

Some domestic tourists were taking a guided tour wearing red caps displaying the name of the firm that organised the tour. A young man was sitting on a wooden bench and fiddling with his phone. 

Refusing to reveal his name, he said he was an economics graduate and is on a job hunt. 

“Any government that comes to power should fix the massive unemployment problem by bringing new industries. I am preparing for competitive exams and going for painting jobs to meet my expenses. Many graduates work with me. Take any gig worker here, and he will be a graduate,” he said. 

A group of youngsters nearby, part of Trivandrum Reads, a local silent reading community, were taking selfies after wrapping up their weekend meetup. Most of them refused to speak on the elections. 

Bini Baburaj, a member of Trivandrum Reads and a voter in the Vattiyoorkavu constituency, said the fight there is between V.K. Prashanth, the incumbent MLA, and K. Muraleedharan, who represented the constituency from 2011 to 2019. 

“Both of them have enormous goodwill among people, so voters are in a dilemma about whom to back this time. But I think Prashanth is slightly more popular within the constituency. The LDF has done well vis-à-vis tech adoption in government schools, but massive unemployment is a problem. If the LDF comes back, there is a fear that they might become complacent, but if the UDF or BJP comes to power, they will have some motivation to prove themselves,” said Baburaj.

 

The BJP won the Nemom seat in 2016 before losing it to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 2021. In the current elections, BJP state chief Rajeev Chandrasekhar is running a spirited campaign to wrest the seat from the CPI(M)’s V Sivankutty, who is also minister for general education. Chandrasekhar gave the incumbent MP, Shashi Tharoor, a tough fight in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and lost by 16,077 votes.

 

“Nemom, Vattiyoorkavu and Kazhakkoottam — I think that is a litmus test for the BJP. If it is unable to win at least two of these constituencies, its growth will be stunted. The BJP did well in the Lok Sabha elections as well as in the recently concluded local-body polls in these two constituencies. Nemom is crucial for the Left, but it is not do-or-die for it, unlike the BJP,” said J Prabhash, former pro-vice-chancellor, Kerala University, and a political analyst based in Thiruvananthapuram.

 

Prabhash added that minority vote consolidation would be a key factor for Congress and the CPI(M) in Nemom.

 

“Minority votes are likely to go en bloc to the non-BJP candidate who they think has a higher chance of winning or coming second. And the Sabarimala case will be a key factor in Vattiyoorkavu, Kazhakkoottam, and Nemom because all three are Hindu-dominated constituencies. If the theft case strikes a chord, all LDF candidates will be on a sticky wicket,” Prabash said.