Congress leader K. Padmaja Venugopal’s headline-grabbing political migration to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has arguably been more of a propaganda blow than an organisational setback to the party in Kerala.
The Congress reportedly has no fear that the desertion of the scion of a prominent Congress family that long dominated State politics would precipitate an alarming level of rank-and-file defections from the party to the BJP.
Nevertheless, the Congress reportedly felt that Ms. Venugopal’s somewhat unexpected and radical shifting of political allegiance had transiently obscured the party’s patently secular messaging at the hustings.
