BJP fields Kerala Congress leader as party's candidate in Nilambur
Ending weeks of uncertainty, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national leadership in New Delhi on Sunday fielded advocate Mohan George as the National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) candidate for the Nilambur Assembly byelection.
Mr. George, who entered politics as a leader of the Kerala Students Congress (KSC), was a close associate of the late founder of the Kerala Congress (B) [KC(B)], R. Balakrishna Pillai, for long. He later switched to several Kerala Congress parties and joined the Kerala Congress, a United Democratic Front (UDF) ally.
Voters' orientation
The BJP, which initially termed the bypoll at the fag end of the second Pinarayi Vijayan government as inconsequential, had realised that it could ill-afford to remain on the sidelines in the pivotal poll, widely reckoned an approximate point of reference to gauge the orientation of Kerala voters in the run-up to the 2026 Assembly polls.
Nevertheless, questions about Mr. George's current political leanings prompted the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) campaigns in Nilambur to accuse each other of 'gifting' the BJP a candidate from the Christian settler farmer community, a significant electoral bloc in the constituency. (The BJP had garnered 17,000 votes in the Nilambur Assembly segment in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.)
Kerala Congress leader Mons Joseph, MLA, denied the LDF's accusation that Mr. George was a party member. He said Mr. George had switched allegiance to the Kerala Congress (M), an LDF ally. The LDF countered it by publishing photographs of Mr. George attending the Kerala Congress district convention in Malappuram last month.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) State committee member and LDF's candidate for Nilambur bypoll M. Swaraj said the BJP found the UDF a favourite hunting ground to poach for ideologically ambiguous leaders, and Mr. George was the latest.
BJP membership
Mr. George is a Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church member, an Oriental Protestant Christian denomination. He said he would soon accept the BJP's primary membership and file his nomination papers on Monday. Mr. George said BJP leader Noble Mather had invited him to join the party. He said the Bharath Dharma Jana Sena, a BJP ally widely perceived as the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam's political arm with sizable pockets of influence in the backwards class Ezhava community, had declined the Nilambur seat and suggested his name instead.
(Girish Mekkatu, a BDJS leader, garnered 12,000 votes in the 2016 Assembly elections in Nilambur. In 2021, the BJP's vote share in the constituency had dwindled to 8,500 when the party pitched its candidate T.K. Ashok Kumar.)
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