Kerala BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar, contesting from the Nemom Assembly constituency in Thiruvananthapuram, has his task cut out for Thursday’s elections but factionalism could play spoilsport.

Chandrasekhar, 61, former Union minister of state for IT, was sent from New Delhi by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah and former national BJP president J.P. Nadda in March 2025 to ensure that the party make inroads in Kerala within the next decade.

But the rival faction led by V. Muraleedharan, former Union minister of state for external affairs, and his loyalists are keen to ensure that under no circumstance Chandrasekhar wins Nemom, a fertile ground for the BJP. Their concern is that if Chandrasekhar emerges victorious, their influence in the state unit could further get eroded.

For long, the Kerala BJP was under the control of Muraleedharan, followed by his successor K. Surendran. Now, while Muraleedharan is contesting from Kazhakoottam in Thiruvananthapuram district, his trusted lieutenant Surendran is in the fray from Manjeswaram in Kasaragod district. The party leadership believes that the two candidates have every chance of winning.

In the last Assembly election, Surendran was defeated by Indian Union Muslim League candidate P.B. Abdul Razak by a paltry 89 votes. The other constituencies which the BJP feels it could win are Nemom and Palakkad (Sobha Surendran).

Two other BJP candidates, Padmaja Venugopal in Thrissur and P.K. Krishnadas in Kattakada, are also putting up an impressive show. In all these constituencies, the role played by the RSS leadership is crucial, as every shakha member has been assigned a task of “nothing less than winning”.

A senior BJP leader told The Telegraph that the feud between Muraleedharan and Chandrasekhar has been continuing for a year. “There are currently two power centres in the Kerala BJP — Chandrasekhar and Muraleedharan. Chandrasekhar was successful in ousting the CPM from the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation after 45 years, ensuring that Modi’s experiment of bringing him to Kerala yielded results. This had dampened the spirits of the dissident camp as they realised that Chandrasekhar was getting a firm grip on the party. However, the BJP did not make much progress in other districts in the local body elections. The dissident group’s ulterior motive is to see that Chandrasekhar does not win from Nemom so that they don’t get sidelined,” a senior BJP leader said.

However, the dissident faction vehemently denied the allegation, saying the party has been fighting the election unitedly. The BJP opened its account in the Kerala Assembly with Nemom in the 2016 election when veteran leader O. Rajagopal won. But in the next Assembly election in 2021, the CPM wrested the seat from the BJP.

There are 32,000 minority votes in Nemom, which could swing in favour of either the CPM or the Congress.