For the UDF to emerge as Kerala's pre-eminent secular formation for the 2026 Assembly polls, coalition leader Indian National Congress will be asked to pay a heavy price.

There is a general consensus within the UDF that the Congress has to identify what a senior Congress leader defined as a "distinguished sacrificial lamb" to contest from Nemom, a constituency from where the BJP is most likely to win. "That the Congress will lose is certain. We will also be placed third. Still, the party has to field one of its stalwarts in Nemom to give the impression that it will do whatever it takes to deny the BJP a seat," the senior Congress leader said.

Problem is, no Congress stalwart is willing to be the sacrificial lamb. A Congress source said that a tentative "Suicide Squad" has been formed from which to pick the Nemom candidate.

There are now four names in the squad: Shashi Tharoor, K C Venugopal, Shafi Parambil and K Sudhakaran. None of them have agreed, a source said. Another Congress leader, Onmanorama, talked to said that the probable Nemom candidates had still not been informed. "The top leadership was till now busy with the 'Puthuyuga' yatra. Now that it is over, Nemom will soon be taken up for discussion," the leader said.

If no top Congress names are willing, the UDF could even try and convince N K Premachandran to contest from Nemom.

The noteworthy aspect of the 'Suicide Squad' is that all its members are MPs, and therefore, there is no risk of any of them suffering a political demise. In 2021, when he contested from Nemom, Muraleedharan was also an MP. The Nemom loss, rather than diminishing his stature, had improved Muraleedharan's standing in the party as a leader who was willing to sacrifice for a larger cause. Now that he is not an MP, Muraleedharan is not in the 'Suicide Squad'.

In the last Assembly elections, the party originally wanted its biggest leader, Oommen Chandy, to be the 'sacrificial lamb' from Nemom. Such a radical and risky move was necessitated by the widespread condemnation the Congress had received after O Rajagopal won the seat in 2016, making it the BJP's first ever win in Kerala. The Congress was the main accused.

It was felt that the Congress had behaved irresponsibly, and without farsight, by handing over the Nemom seat to minor allies after 2006.

In 2011, the UDF's Nemom candidate was Charupara Ravi of Social Janata (Democratic). That was the first time the BJP edged out the UDF and secured the second spot. From just 5.59 per cent of the votes in 2006, the BJP vote share swelled to a formidable 37.49 per cent. Significantly, this was even before Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.

Failing to make sense of the mighty political locomotive surging towards it, the Congress refused to take the seat back and fielded Surendran Pillai of Janata Dal (United), which had just then defected from the LDF. Rajagopal won with a majority of 8671 votes in 2016. The UDF was crushed.

The CPM vote share was more or less intact. But the UDF, which in 2006 had claimed over 50 per cent of the votes when Congress's N Sakthan was candidate, could not pocket even 10 per cent of the votes. What was left of the UDF in Nemom was just the bare bones, fully stripped of flesh and muscle.

The Oommen Chandy gamble five years later indicated the lengths the Congress would go to make up for its Nemom folly. By letting the BJP win in Nemom, the party realised that its secular claims sounded less convincing. Chandy as Congress candidate in Nemom was the party's aggressive move to reclaim its secular space.

The former Chief Minister somehow wriggled out. He managed to convince the party that Puthupally voters would be grievously hurt by the decision.

Congress then fielded K Muraleedharan, its next best choice. He was only third but wrenched enough votes to deny BJP's Kummanam Rajasekharan a victory. From under 10 per cent, the UDF vote share expanded to 25 per cent.

Even Tharoor, it is felt, will find it hard to win this time. In the 2025 local body polls, the BJP had won 15 of the 23 wards that fell within the Nemom constituency. In the 2024 Lok Sabha, though Tharoor won, he was behind BJP's Rajeev Chandrasekhar in the Nemom segment by 22,126 votes; this time, Rajeev Chandrasekhar has already declared himself as the BJP's Nemom candidate.

Yet, Tharoor's or the candidature of others in the 'Suicide Squad', it is argued, could thwart BJP's chances in Nemom. "If the UDF does not have a serious contender in Nemom, the anti-CPM votes could accumulate in BJP's favour. A popular Congress candidate, by his sheer presence, can easily draw a substantial portion of this anti-incumbency votes to the UDF," a senior UDF leader said on the condition of anonymity.