Kerala Assembly Election: Candidate Sreesanth, On New Pitch, Queues Up To Vote

Kochi: Flamboyant cricketer-turned-politician S Sreesanth stood in a queue in Kochi to vote early on Monday morning in the Kerala assembly elections that he is contesting as a BJP candidate.

"This is a great opportunity given by the BJP to me to give back to society," the 33-year-old, dressed in blue Nehru jacket, said. Though Sreesanth votes in Kochi, he is contesting the elections from Kerala capital Thirruvananthapuram.

Sreesanth's candidacy is seen as a bid by the BJP to draw young voters in Kerala as the party makes an attempt to make an impact in a state where politics has been dominated by the Congress and the Left. Many have questioned the choice - Sreesanth has spent the last few years embroiled in a match-fixing scandal that ended his cricket career and saw him being arrested in 2013 and being granted bail.

He has also been called an outsider in his constituency as he takes on two seasoned politicians, sitting Congress MLA VS Sivakumar, who is also the state's Health Minister and Antony Raju of the Left Democratic Front or LDF.

In Kerala, the BJP has tied with the new Bharat Dharma Jana Sena, launched by an organisation of the backward Ezhava Hindu community, which forms 23 per cent of the state's population and hopes to make a serious impact in these elections.

The party has so far never won an assembly or parliament seat in Kerala. But it nearly doubled its vote share from the 2011 assembly elections to the 2014 general elections, and hopes to build on that momentum.

Historical data and current alliances indicate that a good performance by the BJP will come at the cost of the Congress-led United Democratic Front led by Oommen Chandy, who hopes for second straight term in Kerala, which has in more than three decades not voted the same party or alliance back to power.