THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: “You know me, right?” he asks a 10-year-old watching him with curiosity. The question comes just as a key voters’ meeting in Karumam ward winds down.
BJP state chief and Nemom candidate Rajeev Chandrasekhar leans in, shakes hands with the boy, Vijay. Caught off guard, Vijay smiles sheepishly and nods. Turning to Thiruvananthapuram deputy mayor G S Ashanath, Rajeev quips, “He can be our future booth official, right?”
The moment, light and unscripted, offers a glimpse into the style of his campaign — one that skips elaborate introductions and instead leans on familiarity, long-term messaging, and interactions that often carry a studied political undertone.
Rajeev’s jam-packed campaign begins early, by about 8am. His focus is on key voters’ meetings across major pockets of Nemom. The strategy is clear: engage influential voices who can, in turn, shape opinion and consolidate support for the ‘Lotus’.
He goes beyond structured gatherings — visiting homes, stopping at shops, and engaging in brief but direct public interactions through the forenoon.
As the midday heat intensifies, the campaign briefly shifts indoors. Rajeev retreats to the newly furnished five-storeyed ‘Vikasitha Nemom HQ’ in Kaimanam, a nerve centre where at least 50 party workers coordinate campaign efforts.
Here, he fields interviews and reviews election activities on the ground. By late afternoon, as the sun relents, he is back on the road, continuing his outreach until around 9pm. In between his personal campaigns, Rajeev also updates himself about the latest developments and interacts with the media, balancing his dual roles as candidate and state party chief.
Spread across 22 corporation wards, the constituency demands constant presence. Rajeev is backed by a team of 17 BJP councillors, who will fill Rajeev’s gap in this tight schedule.
The campaign is carefully planned to cover all major communities. Key households linked to NSS and SNDP functionaries, as well as families belonging to minority communities, are included in the outreach. Special attention is paid to senior RSS workers, whose groundwork laid the party’s base in the constituency.
Throughout interactions, Rajeev’s style remains understated yet attentive. At a home in Kamaleswaram, for instance, he passively listens to a news conference by Congress veteran A K Antony being telecast on TV while engaging with voters.
Rajeev appears to have fully eased from technocrat to politician. “I couldn’t read today’s newspaper. Let me take a look,” he says, casually picking up a Malayalam daily after entering a home here.
Interestingly, there also seems to be a subtle recalibration in how he presents himself politically. While he dons the saffron shawl associated with the party, Rajeev does not aggressively invoke the BJP or Hindutva. Perhaps to create an air of comfort, the man-next-door image.
As he is about to leave after a house visit, a college student approaches him for an autograph. “Wouldn’t it be better to do this after the elections?” he wonders aloud.
Well, despite campaign posters portraying him as ‘Rajeevettan’, a friendly neighbourhood figure, many voters still seem to perceive him through the lens of his past: a technocrat and former Union minister with a larger-than-life presence.