Congress in Kerala faces an acid-test to foil CPI-M, BJP bid to crack its broad social base

For the Congress central leadership, the party’s Kerala unit has provided the best results in the past three Lok Sabha polls in otherwise gloomy national performances. The state party can also take pride in providing both Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra safe passage to the Lok Sabha from Wayanad when the family’s northern electoral turf became shaky against the BJP.

Despite these laurels, the state Congress is facing an acid test in the 2026 assembly polls in Kerala, more so after the party’s shock defeat in the 2021 election, when the CPM-led LDF clinched its unprecedented second consecutive victory, defying Kerala’s cyclical electoral trend. That makes the Congress’ task, to put its Kerala house in order by clinically mending its political, organisational and social fabric, most critical before the upcoming local body and assembly polls.

Recent political developments show that the Congress, which traditionally drew its strength in Kerala from its rainbow social base across the majority Hindu community and the Muslim-Christian minority communities, is facing attempts by the CPM and the BJP to chip away at that base. After its big defeat in the Lok Sabha polls against the Congress-led UDF and faced with anti-incumbency against the second LDF regime, the state CPM appears to be having a rethink in its efforts to aggressively woo the Muslim community – there was even talk of the Marxists attempting to win over the Indian Union Muslim League from the Congress camp. Instead, it is now evidently working to consciously consolidate, if not safeguard, its Hindu base, especially among the Ezhava community.

Many in Kerala politics see this “shift” as a way of the CPM recognising the Muslim base of the Congress remaining unwavering, and therefore, taking extra care to guard its Hindu base from the BJP’s expansion drive, especially after the saffron party won its first Lok Sabha seat from Thrissur in the 2024 election, data of which also showed that the party had led in around a dozen assembly segments.

While CM Pinarayi Vijayan lately accused the Congress and Gandhis of having taken Jamaat-e-Islami support in Wayanad election, blaming Congress for troubles in the INDIA bloc and alleging IUML was compromising with Islamic radical outfits, would have embarrassed the “textbook Leftists” of Delhi but for the “practical” Kerala Marxists, meeting electoral exigencies at any cost meant everything.

Equally, the CM recently equating Sanatana Dharma with Varnashrama Dharma was seen as a way of competitively (vis-a-vis the Congress) wooing the other backward classes and Dalit communities from the Hindutva drive of BJP.

Adding to the task of the state Congress to ring-fence its Hindu base from the CPM and the BJP’s poaching bids, is the state BJP’s bid to woo sections of the Christian community, another traditional base of the state Congress.

Concluding that both the Hindu and Christian voters contributed to its Thrissur victory, and that the recent Waqf Board land row at Munambam has further provided it an opening to woo Christians, the BJP recently appointed three Christins as the party’s district committee presidents in Kerala. This, at a time when the Congress has already lost its ally and traditional Christian party, KC(M), to the Left.

This backdrop makes the run-up to the 2026 assembly election a crucial phase for the state Congress to show imagination and ensure ground work to safeguard and reinforce its rainbow social base as any cracks in it could prove to be electorally costly for the party.

Any efforts towards that, many state Congress leaders admit, would need organisational reinforcement ensuring internal harmony and unity by sorting out factional rivalries and by checking the surging chief ministerial ambitions among the key leaders, and projecting a collective leadership and a positive electoral agenda with wider appeal.

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