Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has surprised people many times with its unique decisions. Once again he did the same shocking thing in Kerala. In Kerala, BJP has won 3 seats in the assembly elections, out of which 2 have been Union Ministers and are counted among the big political faces in the state. But the party has replaced these two names with less known MLA B.B. Gopakumar has been made the leader of the party’s legislative party in the assembly.
Gopakumar emerged as the BJP’s first choice as the legislative party leader, while the party had big faces in veteran MLAs Rajeev Chandrasekhar and V. Muraleedharan. The special thing is that both have been ministers in the Modi government at the Center and are also MLAs.
My selection surprised me: Gopakumar
It had been almost 4 weeks since the election results were declared in the state, and during this time the Assembly had also elected the Speaker, but the BJP had not selected the leader of its legislative party. Now this announcement was made on Wednesday, 2 days before the commencement of the assembly session. This session is going to start with the Governor’s address on Friday.
After being made the leader of the legislative party, Gopakumar said, “My selection has surprised me. I came to know about it when Rajeev Chandrashekhar, who is also the state president of the party, informed me about it. I will become the voice of BJP in Kerala in the Assembly. It is a great honor for me.”
Gopa bloomed lotus in LDF stronghold
Gopakumar, who won from Chathannur seat, considered a stronghold of Left Democratic Front (LDF), in the recent assembly elections. He is being considered as a ‘dark horse’ i.e. a leader who emerged unexpectedly in the Kerala elections. Last week, he also contested the election as the Speaker candidate from BJP.
He is a retired school headmaster and a well-known face of the Hindu Ezhava community in his constituency. He had joined BJP a decade ago through the party’s ‘missed-call membership campaign’.
The Chathannoor seat, which had been held by the CPI since 2006, is one of those seats in Kerala where RSS workers quietly did a lot of work at the grassroots level, and this is the reason why Gopakumar got this unexpected victory.
Win in third attempt after losing twice
Gopakumar, who joined BJP from Congress, had also contested elections from Chathannur seat in the year 2016. However, then he got only 24.92 percent votes. He entered the field in 2021 also. He single-handedly increased the vote share of the party and increased the vote share to 30.61 percent. For the next 5 years he worked with RSS at the grassroots level.
Then in the 2026 elections, Gopakumar defeated CPI candidate R. Defeated Rajendran and achieved a spectacular victory. He got a total of 38.54 percent votes in the elections. Gopakumar said that the Chathannoor model can be replicated in all those seats in Kerala where there is a possibility of BJP’s victory in both the elections (Assembly and Lok Sabha).
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