Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 9: Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s visit to Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday comes at a politically delicate moment for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Kerala, as the leadership weighs a landmark civic victory against unmet electoral benchmarks.
HM Shah will attend the BJP’s state core committee meeting and hold discussions with councillors who secured the party’s first-ever victory in the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation.
BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar, former Union Minister V. Muraleedharan, former state president K. Surendran, Shobha Surendran and other senior leaders are expected to participate in the deliberations, which are likely to focus on strategy, messaging and organisational consolidation.
The visit follows the December local body elections in which the BJP failed to meet HM Shah’s earlier directive of securing a 25 per cent vote share across the state.
That shortfall has since been partially offset by the breakthrough in the state capital, a result the party has projected as evidence of its growing urban appeal and organisational maturity.
Party sources said that Union Minister Shah is expected to underline a campaign approach centred on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with the state unit convinced that projecting PM Modi as the political face can help the BJP move beyond marginal gains to a more competitive presence in Kerala.
The leadership believes that the PM Modi-centric narrative offers the party its best chance to convert visibility into seats rather than merely registering token electoral successes.
However, it remains to be seen whether the symbolic importance of capturing the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation will ultimately outweigh the failure to achieve the targeted vote share.
While the win in corporation has delivered a psychological boost and a headline-making first, critics within and outside the BJP argue that sustained electoral expansion will be judged more by statewide vote consolidation than by isolated victories.
HM Shah’s engagement with the state leadership is therefore being viewed as both a stock-taking exercise and a course correction.
The discussions are expected to address whether the party should prioritise headline-grabbing wins in key urban centres or refocus on the longer-term objective of building a consistent vote base across regions.
As the BJP attempts to recalibrate its Kerala strategy, HM Shah’s visit underscores the party’s determination to translate a historic civic gain into a broader political footprint – while confronting the hard arithmetic of vote share that continues to shape its ambitions in the state, when it has none in the 140-member Kerala Assembly.
IANS
