CPM won in Alappuzha seat even as Congress swept Kerala in the 2019 elections
The focus will be on Kerala during the Phase 2 voting of Lok Sabha elections 2024 as all 20 seats in this southern state go to polls on April 26.
One of the most keenly watched constituencies in this phase will be in the serene backwater gateway of Alappuzha where Rahul Gandhi's trusted aide KC Venugopal will try to wrest his stronghold back from the CPM's AM Ariff. It will also witness the BJP's Sobha Surendran challenge the Left-Congress binary that the state has traditionally voted for.
Mr Venugopal is not new to Alappuzha, a constituency he has represented twice (2009-2019) in the Lok Sabha. He did not contest the 2019 elections since he was playing a key role in the Congress's overall strategy.
His absence marked a stark political vacuum in Alappuzha, which became the only seat to be clinched by the CPM even as Congress swept the state, winning 19 out of 20 seats, in the 2019 general elections.
The move to bring him back to his old constituency is an attempt to regain the lost stronghold from the CPM, which remains a Congress rival in Kerala though the two parties have joined hands at the national level.
Mr Venugopal, who has been a junior minister for power and civil aviation in the Manmohan Singh cabinet, has strong electoral stats: he has won the Alappuzha Lok Sabha seat twice and recorded a hattrick in the Alappuzha assembly seat (1996-2009).
The Congress general secretary has projected a sweep by the UDF, the regional alliance that it leads, and zero seats for the BJP in the state, besides a victory for himself.
Last year, Mr Venugopal was appointed as a member of the Coordination Committee of the INDIA bloc. Before entering national politics, he won the assembly elections thrice and served as a Dewaswom and tourism minister in the Oommen Chandy cabinet in Kerala.
His CPM rival, AM Ariff has been repeated to defend his seat, banking on the strong performance of the Left parties in the 2021 assembly elections. In 2019, he defeated the Congress's Shanimol Usman, a loss that came after KC Venugopal chose not to contest. He is among the three Lok Sabha MPs that the CPM has, and the only one from Kerala.
As many as 194 candidates, including 25 women, will be contesting in the 20 seats that go to polls on April 26. The state has a total electorate of 2.8 crore. The results will be counted together for all 543 constituencies on June 4.