THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Now, with battle lines drawn after the three fronts announced their candidates in majority of the seats, the Nemom seat is poised to witness the biggest star war in the coming Assembly elections.
The stage is set for a neck and neck three-way fight in Nemom where the BJP has fielded Kummanam Rajasekharan to retain its prestige seat which it had won through O Rajagopal in 2016. As for their rivals CPM, V Sivankutty was brought in to wrest the seat.
Firebrand Congress leader K Muraleedharan's entry as the Congress candidate has literally turned the fight into a prestige contest, which none of the three contenders in the fray can afford to lose since that can have a major political fallout in the future.
Nemom, which at one point of time was represented by former chief minister K Karunakaran, had sent both LDF and UDF candidates to the assembly until 2011.
But after the Congress decided to hand over the constituency to its ally, the Congress’ plan went awry with the BJP emerging as a force to reckon with by tapping into the pro-Hindutva votes.
In 2010, the BJP had managed to win a lone seat in the local body elections in Nemom. The party increased its tally to 10 seats in 2015 and then went on to win 14 out of the 22 wards in the Nemom constituency in 2020. Similar is the case with vote share in the assembly polls.
In 2011, CPM's V Sivankutty won the elections garnering around 42.94 per cent of the vote, with O Rajagopal (BJP) finishing second. But in 2016, Rajagopal scripted political history when he defeated Sivankutty by a margin of 8,671 votes. In the process, he became the first BJP MLA ever to be elected to the Kerala Assembly.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Nemom was the lone assembly segment where winning Congress candidate in Thiruvananthapuram seat Shashi Tharoor had trailed Kummanam Rajasekharan who had put up a strong fight securing a lead of over 12,000 votes. The contest in Nemom promises to be an electrifying one as the three candidates are household names with a mass base.