Anil Antony, the son of senior Congress leader AK Antony and the BJP’s candidate from Pathanamthitta, insists the election this time in Kerala would be different. The state, which voted for all its 20 seats in the second phase of the general election today, is in financial distress and there is massive anti-incumbency, he claimed in an exclusive interview to NDTV.
Kerala is one of the few states which has never sent a BJP candidate to parliament. This has been the situation even after 2014, despite the state having 55 per cent voters belonging to the majority community.
The politics of the state has been bipolar for decades, swing between a Congress and a Left-led alliance. The state is also one of the few that routinely votes out the incumbent government. But in 2021, in a shocking break with tradition, Kerala gave a second term to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Now the BJP is trying to create a niche in the state in its quest of 370 seats.
Asked what was different this time, Anil Antony told NDTV there are “multiple factors”.
“In the last election when Rahul Gandhi was standing (from Wayanad) for the first time, a narrative was created that the UPA was winning. The UPA would come back and Rahul Gandhi would be the Prime Minister. There was some mood shift at the end of it. This is why the votes in the assembly election was very different from what happened in the national stage,” he told NDTV.
The state, he added, was in “dire financial distress”, where the government has been unable to pay salaries and pension to its employees. “So from Kasaragod to Thiruvananthapuram, in each of the 20 seats, there is anti-incumbency,” he said.
“Now you talk to a Congress or a CPM supporter and you will see the NDA-3 is coming back under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,’ he added.
Mr Antony had quit the Congress and switched to the BJP last year. The party expects him to help expand its base in the state, especially among Christians.
Earlier this month, Antony Senior broke his silence over his son joining the BJP. Anil Antony, he said, should and will lose from Pathanamthitta and that it was wrong for children of Congress leaders to join the BJP.
Union minister Rajnath Singh had immediately joined issue. At an election rally for Anil Antony, he said, ‘”All I have to tell Mr Antony is: even if he might not vote for him, he should bless him as a father. I was surprised by what he said. Maybe he said so because of pressure from the Congress”.
In Pathanamthitta, Mr Antony is up against Congress’s Anto Antony, the three-time sitting MP and the Left’s TM Thomas Issac, a former finance minister of the state.
His candidature has upset senior politician PC George, who said fielding him has scuttled the BJP’s chances in the constituency. “No one knows him. The BJP will have to go around and introduce him to the people,” said the senior leader, who recently merged his Kerala Janapaksham (Secular) with the BJP.
