The Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) fielded its Kerela unit president Okay Surendra against Congress chief Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad on Sunday. Gandhi is a sitting MP of the constituency. The BJP launched its fifth listing of candidates on Sunday night naming 111 candidates from totally different states.
Scholar and former vice-chancellor of Sree Sankara Sanskrit University, Okay S Radhakrishnan, and actor-turned-politician G Krishnakumar will contest from the Ernakulam and Kollam constituencies, respectively. T N Sarasu. former authorities school principal, would search electoral luck from Alathur within the northern Palakkad district.
The BJP is striving to interrupt decades-old bipolar politics dominated by the Congress-led UDF and the CPI(M)-led LDF in Kerala. The celebration had earlier introduced the candidates for 12 seats. Its ally BDJS will contest 4 seats within the state.
With the shock candidature of Surendran in Wayanad, a conventional Congress bastion, the BJP is attempting to offer a becoming reply to its opponents by fielding a powerful candidate against Rahul Gandhi. CPI’s Annie Raja is the candidate of the state’s ruling Left within the constituency.
Surendran, the face of the saffron celebration’s fierce agitations against the entry of younger girls into Sabarimala years in the past, has been serving because the president of the state unit of the BJP since 2020. Hailing from Ulleyeri in Kozhikode district, Kunnummel Surendran, who started his profession as Wayanad district president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, had unsuccessfully contested from Pathanamthitta within the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Though he was fielded from Konni within the meeting bypoll in the identical 12 months, he could not make it. Known as an in depth confidant of Union Minister V Muraleedharan, Surendran misplaced the Manjeswaram constituency by a mere 89 votes within the 2016 Assembly polls. A well known scholar, author, orator, and academician, Okay S Radhakrishnan joined the BJP in 2019.
He served because the vice-chancellor of Sree Sankara Sanskrit University in Kalady and the chairman of the state Public Service Commission in the course of the tenures of the Congress-led UDF governments within the state earlier than starting his political profession. He unsuccessfully contested from the Alappuzha Lok Sabha constituency in the course of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Fifty-five-year-old G Krishnakumar is an actor-turned-politician and is presently a nationwide council member of the BJP. In 2021, Krishnakumar contested on the BJP ticket to the state meeting from Thiruvananthapuram. T N Sarasu, a former authorities school principal who hit headlines over her confrontations with the Left scholar union, will contest from Alathur to tackle sitting MP and Congress chief Remya Haridas and State Devaswom Minister and senior CPI(M) chief Okay Radhakrishnan. Kerala’s 20 Lok Sabha constituencies will go to polls on April 26.
(With inputs from PTI)
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