Lok Sabha Elections 2024: Kerala BJP state president K Surendran to take on Rahul Gandhi in Wayanad
Kerala BJP state president K Surendran will contest in Wayanad for the Lok Sabha elections. The 5th list of the candidates were released on Sunday (Mar 24) by the BJP.
FollowWayanad: Kerala's BJP president, K Surendran, is poised to enter the electoral fray in Wayanad, where the current MP and former Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, is contesting again. The BJP released the fifth list of candidates for the Lok Sabha Elections on Sunday (Mar 24).
Actor and BJP leader G Krishnakumar will contest in Kollam. KS Radhakrishnan will contest in Ernakulam and TN Sarasu in Alathur. With this, the announcement of the NDA candidates in Kerala is completed.
Wayanad, a stronghold of the Congress party, has remained under its control since 2009. Gandhi secured victory in the constituency in 2019, retaining his Lok Sabha membership after losing his Amethi seat to Union Minister Smriti Irani. His opponent this time, Surendran, faces the significant challenge of disrupting the traditional Congress-Left dominance in Kerala's political landscape. While both the Congress and the Left are part of a national alliance, they continue to be fierce rivals in Kerala.
K Surendran contested the Lok Sabha elections from the Pathanamthitta constituency in 2019 and secured the third position. In the 2021 Kerala assembly polls, he contested from two constituencies, Manjeswaram and Konni, but lost both contests.
Wayanad becomes the second Kerala constituency witnessing a showdown of political heavyweights, following Thiruvananthapuram, where Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar is set to go head-to-head against the three-time Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.
With the announcement on Sunday, the ruling party has finalized the selection of 398 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. This tally excludes four candidates who withdrew their nominations amid controversies. The BJP's nominee list is now almost complete for the 543-member assembly.
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