Although Kerala has bucked the trend of scrupulously alternating between the Left Democratic Front led by the CPI(M) and the United Democratic Front led by the Congress by voting the LDF for a second consecutive term, it continues to remain a two-front State notwithstanding the BJP trying to muscle in by promoting a third front with Bharat Dharma Jana Sena, political party of the populous Ezhava community, as a junior partner.

The vertically split Kerala unit of the Congress could not name its Chief Minister candidate which cost the UDF dearly. The BJP tried to utilise Central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate, CBI and the NIA to tarnish the image of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the Swapna Suresh gold smuggling case.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his very first campaign rally in the State, which took place during the period of Lent, compared Vijayan to Judas who betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, saying the LDF sold Kerala for a few pieces of gold. But the voters of Kerala were not swayed.  Even the solitary Nemom seat the BJP held in the outgoing Assembly could not be retained.

Compared to its 2016 performance, the number of votes polled by the BJP has come down by 428,531. However, the gold smuggling scam provided campaign fodder for the opposition UDF, notably the Congress, which had not much going for it otherwise. Notwithstanding the two-pronged attack by the UDF and the BJP, the LDF won an impressive mandate by bagging 99 seats in the 140-member House.

All the high-voltage investigations by the ED, NIA and the CBI designed to embarrass the government of Vijayan proved futile. Weighed down by two successive floods and the Covid-19 pandemic, it was a testing period for the LDF. Vijayan proved his mettle by his calm, calculated administration. The Scheduled castes, once a vote bank of the Congress, have shifted their loyalty to the LDF, as 13 of the 14 reserved seats went to Vijayan’s party.

The new LDF government will have one more constituent, the Kerala Congress (M), a party of Christians. The UDF, which held 47 seats in the last Assembly, could retain only 41 seats. There has been a steady decline in the number of seats the Congress won and increase in the number of seats the Muslim League, senior partner in the UDF, clinched. If this trend continues, in the not-too-distant future the ML would replace the Congress as leader of the UDF.

For the BJP-led front, the BDJS, its lone ally, could not bring much to the table. Its Chief Minister candidate, E Sreedharan, belonging to the majority community, was defeated in Palakkad, his home constituency where Hindus preponderate, by a Muslim candidate fielded by the Congress. Kerala, a multi-faith state, will continue to remain a distant dream for the BJP unless the party accepts a major makeover in its outlook and policies.