The State’s electorate has dashed the political ambitions of stars-turned-politicians in this Lok Sabha election even though actor Suresh Gopi helped the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) improve its performance in Thrissur by almost three times compared to the votes it won in 2014.
Mr. Gopi, whom the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership had banked on to make it big in Thrissur, ended up third behind T.N. Prathapan of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and Rajaji Mathew Thomas of the Left Democratic Front (LDF). He polled 2,93,822 votes compared to the 1,02,681 votes bagged by K.P. Sreeshan of the NDA in 2014.
Actor-turned-politician Innocent, who was the LDF candidate in Chalakudy, was trounced by his opponent Benny Behanan, convener of the UDF, by a huge margin of 1,32,274 votes.
Brickbats
The actor, who had claimed to have rolled out development projects worth ₹1,750 crore during his tenure as MP, had earned brickbats for not being accessible to voters. The Opposition camp had also alleged that Mr. Innocent failed to deliver when hundreds of families had to face the wrath of the devastating floods in August.
The consolidation of minority Christian and Muslim votes in favour of Mr. Behanan hit the electoral prospects of Mr. Innocent hard. While the veteran actor failed to even hold on to the Assembly constituencies such as Kodungalloor and Kunnathunad in which he had earned a majority in 2014, Mr. Gopi managed to improve the BJP’s position in almost all the seven Assembly constituencies in Thrissur. The actor, who invoked the Sabarimala issue during his first campaign meeting itself, was successful in drawing large crowds throughout his campaign. His stardom too pulled in huge numbers of people, especially women, during campaign meetings.
However, the results indicate that the BJP could not translate the stardom of the candidate to votes.
Even though it was able to polarise Hindu votes to a certain extent, it was balanced with a polarisation of minority votes in the constituency in favour of the UDF.