Congress leader Padmaja Venugopal’s headline-grabbing political migration to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has arguably landed the Congress party in the doldrums in Kerala.
Furthermore, the desertion of the scion of a prominent Congress family that dominated State politics for long has buoyed the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the BJP, though for starkly divergent reasons.
For one, Ms. Venugopal’s desertion seemed to have played into the Communist Party of India (Marxist) ‘s [CPI(M)] Lok Sabha election campaign narrative that the ideological line between the Congress and the BJP was blurred.
