In a major setback to the Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, Padmaja Venugopal, the daughter of former Kerala chief minister K Karunakaran, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday.

Padmaja was welcomed into the party fold at the BJP headquarters in Delhi by Prakash Javadekar.

It is learnt the Congress state leadership’s decision to give a Rajya Sabha seat to the Muslim League is the immediate provocation for Padmaja to leave the Congress camp.

She said she was joining the BJP because she was not happy with the grand old party.

“I am so happy. For the first time, I am changing my party as I was not happy with the Congress for so many years. I had complained to the party high command, but there was no response.

“I even came to see the leadership but they didn’t see me…I have great respect for Sonia Gandhi (former Congress president) but she never gave me time,” she added.

Padmaja’s first election outing was at the Mukundapuram Lok Sabha constituency in 2004, a seat which Karunakaran and numerous Congress candidates won with ease, but she had to bite the dust and lost by a mile to Lonappan Nambadan.

After the loss, she went into political hibernation for a while and her clout further declined after the passing away of Karunakaran in 2010. Then after a while she started getting active in politics, but by then her brother had become a leader, even after he left the Congress for a while and returned.

Her next outing was at the 2016 Assembly elections and from the home bastion of Karunakaran- Thrissur, but luck deserted her and she lost. And again in the 2021 Assembly polls, she lost by a very thin margin of 946 votes and by then for all practical purposes, her electoral ambitions came to a grounding halt.

The exit of Padmaja, who comes from a prominent Congress family that dominated state politics for long, has buoyed both the ruling LDF and the BJP, though for divergent reasons.

She had met the BJP central leaders, including Union Home Minister Amit Shah, on Wednesday. Ironically, she had even come out with a Facebook post on Wednesday and rubbished reports of her shifting gears. But late on Wednesday, she removed the post.

The development has caught the Congress state leadership unaware. Having nursed political ambitions, Padmaja had never managed to win an Assembly or Lok Sabha election.

Congress MP and brother of Padmaja Venugopal, K Muraleedharan called her step an act of “treason” and announced that the family will sever all ties with her. “We won’t allow those affiliated to the BJP to even come near Karunakaran’s memorial,” he said.

With Padmaja’s entry into the BJP, the children of two former Congress chief ministers in Kerala are now in the saffron camp. Congress veteran A K Antony’s son Anil Antony had joined the BJP. He is contesting the upcoming general elections as the BJP candidate from Pathanamthitta.

There is speculation that the BJP will field Padmaja from Chalakudy. If she does not contest, the party will seek her help to campaign in Thrissur where Suresh Gopi is contesting as the BJP candidate. Gopi is Padmaja’s friend and is learnt to have played a role in bringing her to the BJP.