Kerala Assembly polls 2026: Nemom constituency in for a tight and unpredictable contest

A decade ago, Nemom, a semi-urban constituency on the fringes of Kerala’s capital, came into the national spotlight. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had made unsuccessful attempts to gain a foothold in Kerala for decades, had won its first Assembly seat in the state from Nemom that year. Five years later, in 2021, the constituency came into the limelight again as the BJP lost its only seat and the Left Democratic Front (LDF) regained the seat in a close fight.

Things are not much different in 2026; Another tough and unpredictable competition is approaching. While LDF has announced incumbent MLA and General Education Minister V. Sivankutty as its candidate, BJP State President Rajeev Chandrasekhar will also contest as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate. Although many names are included in the list of possible candidates, the Congress has not yet announced its candidate.

Sivankutty, who defeated BJP’s O. Rajagopal in 2011, lost to him in 2016 despite increasing his votes from 50,076 to 59,142 in five years. The Congress, which won the constituency with 60,884 votes in 2006, gave the seat to its United Democratic Front (UDF) ally Janata Dal (United), whose candidate V. Surendran Pillai could get only 13,860 votes in 2016. This led the Left to accuse the UDF of handing over the constituency to the BJP on a platter.

three cornered fight

In 2021, the Congress countered this charge by fielding K. Muraleedharan, leading to a three-cornered fight with Mr. Sivankutty and the BJP’s Kummanam Rajasekharan. Even though the BJP ran a massive campaign calling Nemom the “Gujarat of Kerala”, the LDF won by 3,949 votes. Despite the setback, the BJP gained confidence from its performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and 2025 local body elections.

The BJP managed to win a majority of the wards in Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, which is part of the Nemom constituency, in 2025 (LDF won the rest) and managed to get 45.8% votes in the Nemom Assembly segment in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in which Mr. Chandrasekhar was the candidate. However, the BJP will also temper their hopes considering that they had a 41.4% vote majority in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and are still set to lose the next Assembly elections.

Before the 2008 delimitation, a significant part of Nemom constituency was part of Thiruvananthapuram East Assembly seat. In the first elections held from here in 1957, A. Sadasivan of the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI) won against P. Vishwambharan of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP). In the next election, the results were reversed and Vishwambharan became MLA from here in 1960.

Kong. made its mark

Only the Left or socialist parties won the first five elections in the constituency. The Congress made its mark for the first time in the 1977 elections when it defeated S. Varadarajan Nair’s Communist Party of India (Marxist). [CPI(M)] candidate Pallikal Sadasivan. Varadarajan Nair, who contested as a Congress (U) candidate after the split in the party, lost to Congress (I) candidate E. Rameshan Nair in 1980.

The constituency was won by UDF and LDF twice in four elections since 1996, until the BJP won in 2016. Congress’s N. Sakthan managed to retain the constituency for another term after victory in 2001. After constituency delimitation, the elections in 2011 yielded positive results for the LDF, but the gains were soon lost due to the growth of the BJP and the weakening of its forces. Congress in some areas.

At a time when the BJP is once again harboring high hopes for the constituency, the LDF is fighting hard to defend its territory and the UDF is yet to announce its cards, an exciting contest seems to be on the cards in Nemom.