OPINION | Will Kerala’s 2026 assembly election be Pinarayi Vijayan’s last stand?

CM Pinarayi Vijayan faces political oblivion if LDF doesn't retain power.

With elections in Kerala set to take place in April, politics is on an overdrive in the state. While the two major political formations – the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) are pulling out all stops to form a government, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is keen to emerge as a third alternative.

UDF is ahead right now

The Assembly election was preceded by the local body polls in December, where the UDF made huge gains at the expense of the LDF.

That doesn’t mean Kerala’s chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has thrown in the towel yet. In fact, the Kannur strongman is doing all he can to ensure a record-third term. In 2021, he bucked the trend of Kerala voting out incumbents every five years.

Nevertheless, it will be a tall order, with the stars seeming to align in the UDF’s favour as poll dates approach.  Still, it’s

too early to call, and there are many variables at play.

Après moi, le déluge ?

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) is holding on to its last vestige in Kerala, with chances of mounting a comeback in West Bengal and Tripura looking bleak. Whereas the party’s organisation is deemed robust in Kerala, the fact that it alternated in power until 2021 is what kept it dynamic unlike West Bengal where it degenerated to the point of getting extinct.

There is a stream of thought within the wider Left ecosystem in Kerala that a term out of power would do the party good, and this was aired publicly by Kerala Sahitya Akademi president K Satchidanandan, splitting the state’s cultural figures vertically in its wake.

The traditional Left reckons that the rightward shift of the CPI-M is a compromise to hold on to power, even as the Marxist leaders summarily reject this notion.

Vijayan will not get another chance

For Pinarayi Vijayan however, it’s now or never, as his advanced age and health issues mean that a defeat would mean political retirement. And so Vijayan has been marshalling his troops and inspiring confidence that the election could still be salvaged, notwithstanding the challenges.

Why CPM believes it’s not out of the race

The UDF outperformed its own expectations in the local body polls, resulting in a perception that there is strong anti-incumbency. In 2020 the LDF had managed to do well in the corresponding polls, eventually going on to win the Assembly polls that followed. And this has been the pattern in the state since 1995.

According to Vijayan, however, the election can still be swung, as the LDF managed to hold on to 57 seats, extrapolating the local body poll figures. Vijayan contended in the LDF meeting that the UDF lead in 39 seats is below 10,000 votes, and he exhorted party cadres to work overtime in these constituencies.

The ‘Nava Kerala Survey’ that he envisaged as a door-to-door campaign was struck down by the courts on account of the loss of Rs 20 crore to the public exchequer, but the CPI-M still has a strong organisation at the grassroots.

There is a sense within the CPI-M that the LDF took the local body polls for granted, while the UDF worked overtime given its significance.

There are challenges galore, however, from the Supreme Court hearing the revision petition in the Sabarimala judgment in the days preceding the Assembly polls, and strong minority consolidation against the LDF, as witnessed in the local body polls.

India Shining redux?

A major achievement sought to be publicised by Vijayan was the eradication of ‘extreme poverty’ in the state, but it seemed to backfire on the LDF – much like the doomed ‘India Shining’ campaign of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 2004.

Winning perception battles

Winning is as much about creating a perception, and Vijayan ensured that ally Kerala Congress (Mani) – which had initiated back-channel talks with the UDF at the Syro-Malabar Church’s intervention – stayed put within the LDF.

There is also a bid to consolidate the Hindu vote bank of the Left, which saw an erosion to the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls. That the LDF managed to wrest some of these votes in the local body polls was noticeable notwithstanding the larger setback.

For the UDF, however, poaching LDF allies is not a concern. The UDF only needs to ensure that it doesn’t end up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as the Congress is often prone to. The minority communities consolidated right behind it in the local body polls, even if it will need to maintain a delicate balance going ahead. Notwithstanding multiple chief ministerial hopefuls, the Congress has managed to put up a united face until now. As things stand, the UDF is poised to do well in the Muslim-dominated Malabar and Central Travancore where the Christians hold sway.

However, the election is much more open in South Kerala as well as in Thrissur and Palakkad districts.

Polarisation and counter-polarisation

Pinarayi Vijayan has sought to put the UDF on the defensive by invoking the Jamaat-e-Islami’s support to it. And Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan fell into the CM’s trap by issuing a ‘secular certificate’ to the radical outfit. While the Congress has defended the move variously by recalling the Jamaat’s three-decade backing of the Left and how each vote mattered in an election, it’s well-known that poll arithmetic is seldom that simple.

Leaders like Ramesh Chennithala have apprehensions about this strategy but the wider sentiment within the UDF is that the prevailing anti-incumbency will deem such issues irrelevant.

BJP hopes to improve its performance

Meanwhile, the BJP has been buoyed by its victory in the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, but it fell well behind the benchmark of 20 per cent it set in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. However, the saffron party is confident about doing better than the previous Assembly polls. The party has a new ally in Twenty20, which will boost its prospects in Central Travancore. The BJP prospects suffered a minor blip when Kerala got shortchanged in the Union Budget, in a sign that the Sangh Parivar is concerned more with culture wars than issues of development when it comes to the state.

Culture wars continue through movies

The Kerala Story (2023) – right-wing propaganda against the state masquerading as a film – got a sequel timed to release with the Assembly polls, while the Nivin Pauly-starrer Prathichaya helmed by Left fellow-traveller B Unnikrishnan will act as the Marxist propaganda vehicle against the Congress in the election.

(Anand Kochukudy is a journalist.) 

Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.