Rajeev Chandrasekhar given free hand to remodel Kerala BJP, but with a tight deadline

The BJP Keralam unit under Rajeev Chandrasekhar is conducting a political experiment, something the BJP has not attempted anywhere else in the country. It wants to hide its anti-Muslim image to the point of nearly burying it and, instead, intends to recast itself as an impartial party concerned solely with people-friendly governance.

Chandrasekhar's strategy, as expected, provoked growls of disapproval in the BJP, both at the national level and in Kerala. Home Minister Amit Shah, too, is said to have expressed his reservations. Finally, after taking into account the aversion to extreme communal polarisation among Hindus in Kerala, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP National President J P Nadda are said to have given Chandrasekhar the go ahead.

But their consent comes with a quick expiry date. Chandrasekhar will have to show results this year itself, in the 2025 local body polls. His target: At least two Corporations, five municipalities and 75-100 grama panchayats. As it stands, the BJP controls two municipalities and 19 grama panchayats.

As part of this understanding, Chandrasekhar has also been allowed to pick the team of his choice. Even before the new team was declared on July 11, top BJP sources said that senior leaders who could potentially rebel like K Surendran and V Muraleedharan were told by the national leaders to exercise utmost restraint.

As incentive, they have been told that leaders in their faction who have been left out from the new list would be accommodated in the National Executive of the party.

Armed with this expiry-dated carte blanche, Chandrashekhar included as state general secretaries four leaders who, in the words of a close aide of Chandrashekhar, "had a mind of their own": M T Ramesh, Sobha Surendran, S Suresh and Anoop Antony Joseph. Except for Anoop, the rest were active in Kerala and were known to take independent positions. Reason why, certain BJP sources point out, they were sidelined under Surendran. Anoop is a Delhi-based leader who has worked closely with Chandrasekhar.

A leader who found himself out of the picture said that Chandrasekhar had already cut a deal with Ramesh, Sobha and Suresh to unquestioningly back his plans. "They are going to merely rubber-stamp Rajeev's decisions," the leader said.

Leaders like C Krishnakumar and P Sudheer who were seen as "beholden" to former president Surendran have been "benched" in the group of vice presidents. "BJP state vice presidents have virtually no power. It is just an ornamental position. That is why Sobha Surendran had revolted under K Surendran (Sobha was one of the vice presidents under Surendran)," a top BJP source said. A leader like B Gopalakrishnan, who expected to be promoted as general secretary but was notorious for spewing communal hate, has also been "junked" among the vice presidents. Seemingly elevated but in reality elbowed into irrelevance.

Even then, Shone George's inclusion as one of the 10 vice presidents is seen as a promotion. "He has been rewarded for the credible and consistent manner in which he has attacked Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on the Exalogic-CMRL bribery scandal. Shone is also close to Chandrasekhar but is too young to be inducted as a general secretary," the BJP source said.

Meanwhile, in the 100-odd days he has been the state president, Chandrasekhar has meticulously, with a CEO's single-minded focus, gone about setting up mechanisms that would model the BJP as service-driven than communal-minded.

An example is the creation of help desks or 'public service' outlets in all district headquarters and 'mandalam' offices of the BJP, a first for the party in the country. These help desks will perform both awareness and public service roles. Not only will these outlets provide information on central schemes like Jan Dhan Yojana or Atal Pension Yojana or Mudra loan scheme or Antyodaya Anna Yojana but will also help the deserving to enroll in these schemes. "These benefits will be distributed irrespective of caste and religion," Chandrasekhar's aide said.

In the next two months, this help desk will go digital, with an app available on every BJP worker's mobile phone. "Through this platform, citizens can learn about various schemes, get onboarded, and even file complaints without needing to visit the help desk in person," Chandrasekhar said in a Facebook post.

In the first week of July, Chandrasekhar had also appointed a three-member committee headed by former state BJP president Kummanam Rajasekharan to study the problems faced by paddy farmers in Kerala. The committee had already visited the houses of farmers in Thrissur, Palakkad and Alappuzha. It will file a report in three months.

"We want to dispel the mistaken notion that the BJP is communal," Chandrasekhar's close aide said. Irony is, the worst communal remark Kerala had heard in recent times had come from none other than Chandrasekhar himself.

In 2023, right after the bomb blast at the Jehovah's Witness convention at Kalamassery and before the police could even make a preliminary assessment, Chandrasekhar was certain that it was the work of Muslim extremists and soon had egg on his face. "But did you hear a single communal remark when he stood for elections in Thiruvananthapuram," the aide protested, then added: "His entire campaign pivoted around development. Chandrasekhar is a sharp politician who understands Kerala."