Imagine a glass filled to the brim with water, where a single additional drop risks triggering an overflow and an irreversible change. To prevent this, the existing molecules must carefully manage their surface tension. Kerala’s closed party system has been balanced at this tipping point for more than a decade. In this election, too, the question was whether that next drop would finally fall and disrupt the established order.
While this election was, on the surface, about whether the CPM-led LDF would secure a historic third term and whether the Congress would ride the wave of anti-incumbency, the question lingering at the back of the mind, especially for those outside Kerala, was whether the BJP would breach this tight, carefully managed surface tension. The Congress-led alliance’s victory has, for now, put that question to rest. Yet, the question of how the closed party system survives in Kerala, especially in the wake of the dramatic turnover in Tamil Nadu, becomes important.
Given the absence of survey data, we must rely on election results to infer how parties interpret electoral signals. I assume that parties react to previous results, and their subsequent behaviour reveals what they believe the electorate is telling them.
For the current generation of the BJP’s central leadership, high symbolism and winning have been everything. Any win in Kerala has more symbolic than practical value. They allow party supporters across the country, fed on the rhetoric of the film, The Kerala Story, to believe that they are part of some extraordinary, unstoppable, history-making force. More importantly, wins in Kerala serve a crucial internal purpose, of maintaining the leadership status quo in the party.
While the BJP did concentrate on its core constituency, through Hindu Ekta Sammelans and so on, it downplayed the identity card, focusing more on development and governance. The distinguishing feature of its manifesto was the linkage of policy proposals to existing central government programmes and positioning the campaign as a showcase of the Prime Minister’s record. In a highly centralised party, state elections are not about the state but are adjusted to serve a larger narrative the central leadership wishes to project.
For the CPM, after two terms in power, this was a consolidation and maintenance election. Stung by its dramatic losses in 2019 and 2024 and unsettled by the growing popularity of the BJP, the party appears to have ignored anti-incumbency and decided that vote-chasing was the optimal strategy. Consequently, it attempted to be electorally attractive by pushing its ideology to the background and foregrounding its leader.
However, adopting the position of the very party to which it assumes it has lost its voters is clearly not the best strategy. The party reversed or softened its earlier stance on the entry of women of all ages into the Sabarimala temple, organised events such as the Global Ayyappa Conclave, and facilitated the Maha Magha Mahotsavam, dubbed Kerala’s Kumbh Mela. This reactive repositioning is risky, for it legitimises and popularises the discourse the BJP is attempting to mainstream. Comparative studies show that such shifts are unlikely to yield electoral gains. Voters who support the BJP are unlikely to defect simply because of a policy tweak or a positional shift.
The famous words of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front, that voters “prefer the original to the copy” ring loud. The BJP is therefore far more likely to electorally benefit from these positional shifts. The CPM would do well to remember that once a normalisation occurs, it is difficult to return to the delegitimisation line. There are two historical lessons here. First, the Congress’s unlocking of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1986 did not neutralise the issue but instead pushed the party out of reckoning in large parts of northern India. Second, the federal coalition of 1999 not only mainstreamed the BJP but also made it acceptable as a legitimate party of governance.
Of all three coalition makers, this election mattered most to Congress. A third straight loss would have led to serious cadre disillusionment and may have also fragmented the UDF. Given the BJP’s popularity in other parts of the country, such a defeat would have been devastating and would have also dented its image as the national alternative. A weakened Congress and, by extension, a fragmented UDF might create more room for the BJP-led NDA to consolidate anti-Left and disaffected anti-Congress votes.
Unlike the CPM, which sought to chase voters, the Congress adopted a mobilising strategy and avoided overreaching. The local Congress organisation appeared to have greater autonomy compared to the BJP. The party maintained its traditional position of accommodation, working to retain support among its core constituencies, the minority communities, emphasising a pragmatic economic policy focused on attracting diasporic capital and more importantly, it did not attempt to either dilute or reinforce its conservative positions.
In a federal political system, empowering local party units may be a more suitable strategy for polity-wide parties, as it gives the organisation flexibility to adapt to local requirements. The Congress unit in Kerala has not only enjoyed this autonomy but has also fiercely defended it. The state-unit has strategically treated the high-command as a holding-together mechanism rather than an instrument of control. This autonomy is arguably the party’s most potent asset and a structural obstacle to the unravelling of Kerala’s closed party system.
The writer is with the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad. The views expressed are personal
