West Bengal may have commanded most of the attention and headlines with its eight-phase elections that come with national implications. But...
West Bengal may have commanded most of the attention and headlines with its eight-phase elections that come with national implications. But Kerala, which votes in just one phase on April 6, is set for assembly polls that could be momentous in its own way, without fitting into a simple Bharatiya Janata Party vs everyone else pan-India narrative.
The southern state has seen power alternate between two fronts every five years for the last four decades. Almost like clockwork, and seemingly irrespective of how successful each government was, voters threw out the incumbents and brought in the Opposition in every electoral cycle since 1983.
Yet opinion polls are now predicting that the Communist-led Left Democratic Front is on track to be re-elected, dealing a blow to the ambitions of the Congress – which doesn’t hold power in any southern state at the moment – and reshaping the political narrative of the state.
Here is what you need to know about Kerala elections:
No more see-saw?
Kerala’s political trajectory has been quite consistent, even if some margins were bigger than others. The Communist-led Left Democratic Front and the Congress-led United Democratic Front, each featuring a number of local parties, have alternated power for decades now.
The Bharatiya Janata Party...
