Kasaragod: On November 22, when Udma panchayat returning officer Jayachandran Kattipara accepted Ratheesh P’s nomination papers after scrutiny, his supporters burst into slogans hailing the BJP. 

“We were actually worried his nomination might be rejected,” said Suresh Kumar, chairman of the BJP’s Kizhur ward committee. “I prayed that the papers would go through. When they were accepted, we shouted Jai Jai BJP,” he recalled. 

Ratheesh, however, went on to lose the BJP’s sitting ward of Kizhur — a temple village in coastal Chemnad panchayat — and did so spectacularly. Soon after, all hell broke loose within the party. Grassroots workers and senior leaders alike blamed the district leadership for fielding a convicted child sex offender.

“He should never have been our candidate. His presence damaged us beyond this ward,” said a senior BJP leader.

For the first time in at least 25 years, the BJP has been reduced to just one seat in Chemnad panchayat, a local body dominated by the Muslim League and the Congress.

In Kizhur, the BJP lost to Congress candidate Dileep Kumar D by a massive margin of 327 votes. In contrast, the party had won the ward by 78 votes in 2020. It retained the seat in 2010 and narrowly lost it in 2015 by just 12 votes.

“Kizhur was, and still is, a BJP ward,” said Suresh Kumar. “Even after delimitation this year, the BJP had an edge. But I saw this defeat coming when I went on house visits with Ratheesh. Women were visibly cold towards him.”

The party also lost Chanthankai ward to the Congress and Kokkal to the CPM.

In January 2023, a special court for POCSO cases convicted Ratheesh and sentenced him to one year of rigorous imprisonment for trespassing into the compound of a 13-year-old girl, flashing her, and demanding oral sex. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 20,500, directing that the amount be paid to the survivor, while asking the District Legal Services Authority to grant her further compensation.

By any plain reading of the law, Ratheesh’s nomination should not have survived scrutiny. While the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act and the Representation of the People Act disqualify those sentenced to two years or more for serious offences, the rules are stricter for crimes involving "moral turpitude". Under guidelines issued by the State Election Commission on November 7, any person sentenced to three months or more for an offence involving moral turpitude stands disqualified from contesting local body elections. The disqualification continues for six years after release from prison, unless the conviction itself is stayed. The guidelines were based on the two laws.

Ratheesh did approach the High Court, which suspended his sentence on February 3, 2023. But the court did not stay his conviction.

Courts have consistently held that sexual offences against children amount to moral turpitude -- conduct that reflects moral corruption and a serious breach of basic social values.

When contacted on December 24, Returning Officer Jayachandran said he did not reject the nomination because no party raised an objection. When pointed to the Election Commission’s own guidelines -- specifically Point 15 on moral turpitude -- he sought time to respond. He has not replied since.

If the BJP’s conduct invited outrage, the Congress’s response bordered on convenience. When Onmanorama contacted Congress candidate and eventual winner Dileep Kumar, he was busy thanking voters for electing him. Initially, he said he did not want to discuss the matter. “I don’t want to make it an issue. And I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. Pressed on the BJP's morality of fielding a convicted sex offender and the apparent violation of election rules, he dismissed the case as “fake”.

Later, he offered a more revealing explanation: that the BJP was now trying to make an issue of Ratheesh’s candidacy only because it had lost the election. In truth, the Congress saw in Ratheesh an easy candidate to trounce and win back Kizhur. According to residents, the Congress campaign revolved almost entirely around his POCSO conviction. “They went door to door with news clips of the judgment,” said a Kizhur resident.

Suresh Kumar said BJP women workers stayed away from the campaign. “The survivor belongs to a BJP-supporting family. No woman wanted to seek votes for such a candidate,” he said. Yet Ratheesh polled 630 votes, not far off from the BJP’s 651 votes in the ward in 2020.

When asked why the candidacy was not challenged earlier, Suresh Kumar said he personally informed BJP district president M L Ashwini about Ratheesh’s conviction. “I waited for an hour at her office. When I met her, she told me she already knew about the case, but the decision had been taken,” he said. “It is said that a party ruling the country could not find a candidate other than a convicted sex offender,” he said.

After the defeat, however, Ratheesh was swiftly abandoned by all sides.

The LDF, meanwhile, attributed the episode to the BJP’s broader electoral decline in Kasaragod district. Of the district’s 38 grama panchayats, the BJP emerged as the single-largest party in just three, down from five in 2020.

Across Kasaragod, the BJP won 109 of 725 grama panchayat wards this time, compared to 109 of 664 wards in 2020. In block panchayats, it won seven of 92 divisions, down from 13 of 83 last time. At the district panchayat level, it retained just one of 18 divisions. Kasaragod is the only district in Kerala where the BJP has any representation at that level. 

In municipalities, the BJP won 16 of 120 divisions --12 in Kasaragod, four in Kanhangad, and none in Nileshwar. In 2020, it had won 19 of 113.

What remains conveniently unanswered is simpler than the politics around it:

 When the law was clear and the accused convicted, why did every party and the Election Commission, in their own way, find it easier to look away?