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

A decade ago Nemom, a semi-urban constituency located at the margins of Kerala’s capital, was catapulted into the national spotlight. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which for decades was making unsuccessful attempts to gain a foothold in Kerala, had won its first ever Assembly seat in the State from Nemom that year. Five years later, in 2021, the constituency again hogged all the attention as the BJP lost its sole seat, with the Left Democratic Front (LDF) regaining it in a close fight.

Things are not so different in 2026, with yet another tight and unpredictable contest in the offing. The LDF has announced incumbent MLA and General Education Minister V. Sivankutty as its candidate, while BJP State president Rajeev Chandrasekhar will contest as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate. The Congress is yet to announce its candidate, even as several names have already cropped up in the list of probable candidates.

Mr. Sivankutty, who had 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 had won the constituency with 60,884 votes in 2006 had given the seat to United Democratic Front (UDF) ally Janata Dal (United), whose candidate V. Surendran Pillai could win only 13,860 votes in 2016, leading the Left to accuse the UDF of handing over the constituency in a platter to the BJP.

Three-cornered fight

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

The BJP has managed to win a majority of the wards in the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation which are part of the Nemom constituency (LDF won the rest) in 2025, and 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 its hopes considering they had a majority of 41.4% votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and still went on to lose the next Assembly elections.

Before the delimitation of 2008, a considerable part of the Nemom constituency used to be a part of the Thiruvananthapuram East Assembly seat. In the first elections from here in 1957, the undivided Communist Party of India’s (CPI) A. Sadasivan won against Praja Socialist Party’s (PSP) P. Vishwambharan. The results were reversed in the next election with Vishwambharan becoming an MLA from here in 1960.

Cong. made its mark

In the first five elections from the constituency, only the Left or the socialist parties have won. The Congress first made its mark in the elections of 1977 when S. Varadarajan Nair defeated Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] candidate Pallichal Sadasivan. Varadarajan Nair, who contested as a candidate of the Congress (U) after the split in the party, was defeated by Congress (I) candidate E. Rameshan Nair in 1980.

The constituency was won by the UDF and the LDF twice each in the four elections since 1996, until the BJP won in 2016. Congress’s N. Sakthan managed to retain the constituency for one more term after winning in 2001. The elections in 2011, after delimitation of the constituency, threw up favourable results for the LDF, but the gains were soon lost owing to BJP’s growth and the weakening of the Congress in some of the areas.

With BJP yet again setting high hopes for the constituency, the LDF fighting hard to defend its turf and the UDF yet to reveal its cards, an exciting contest is on the cards in Nemom.