THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: When you really think about it, O Rajagopal’s candidacy in Neyyatinkara is hardly the big surprise that it appeared to be at first. The BJP in Kerala had for long treated this old hand as a resident Ali Baba who would one day ‘open sesame’ a persistently stubborn lotus into blooming. At 83, the former Union Minister continues to be the popular face of the party in the state. Nemom 2011 proved a stinging disappointment, but Neyyatinkara has come as a ‘fortuitous Rajayoga,’ the saffron party ardently believes. That said, Neyyatinkara is decidedly not Nemom, being a complex melting pot of communities. The BJP logic, nevertheless, is that the political muck in which the LDF (T P Chandrasekharan’s murder) and the UDF (appeasing the Muslim League) totters waist-deep would help Rajagopal. This former lawyer, who joined politics as a Jan Sangh man inspired by Deendayal Upadhyaya, was jailed during the Emergency. He arrives at Neyyatinkara via a circuitous route. A BJP man since 1980, his repeated attempts to win elections from Kerala had proved disastrous. His first electoral battle came in 1980 from the Kasargod Lok Sabha constituency, which he lost. His previous from the Nemom Assembly constituency in 2011 also hogged much interest. But he lost to CPM’s V Sivankutty by a margin of 6,415 votes.
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