THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The local body elections have brought tears and cheers for the state BJP. The party has altogether lost at least 600 sitting seats as it huffed and puffed to improve its total seats by almost the same figures.
BJP had won 1,236 seats in the last local body elections in which it amassed close to 14% of total votes polled. This time, the party won 1,800 wards against its target of over 2,500 seats, but lost at least 600 sitting seats, forcing BJP state president K Surendran to accuse widespread cross voting by LDF and UDF against BJP-led NDA. The party has made inroads in a good number of places where it had little presence till now.
Election results show that BJP finished second in close to another 600 wards across the state. It finished second in 32 of the total 100 wards in Thiruvananthapuram city corporation where it failed to make substantive improvement. However, the peculiar predicament the saffron party faced almost throughout the state was tellingly evident in the city corporation polls. While BJP maintained its tally of 35 seats, it made it so after losing 10 sitting seats, mostly to CPM candidates. It experienced similar development in Kozhikode corporation as well. There, BJP retained its tally by winning seven seats. However, it lost five sitting seats in that process.
Even while the BJP accuses the UDF and LDF for cross voting, there are clear indications of the party and NDA winning the confidence of Ezhava and Nair communities in the central Travancore and down south. The inroads the NDA could make in Varkala and Attingal and the decisive victory in several seats in Pathanamthitta and some pockets in Kottayam district prove the same, which BJP had been longing for long. The results, for BJP, underscores the party’s failure to guard the forts it holds whilst winning the new ones.