Kerala's Thrissur LS constituency where high-profile candidates battle it out in triangular contest

Thrissur: Kerala's Thrissur Lok Sabha constituency, where high-profile candidates are in the fray this time, is going to witness a fierce triangular contest between BJP, Congress and the CPI.
BJP has fielded actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi for the second time, hoping that his charisma as an actor will bring the party more votes beyond what they get from the traditional BJP supporters. Sensing the heat of the competition, Congress and the Left announced candidates who enjoy strong grass-level support.
While Congress has fielded K Muralidharan, son of the late Congress doyen K Karunakaran whose pocket borough was once Thrissur, the ruling Left Democratic Front nominated former Agriculture Minister in the previous LDF government in the state, VS Sunilkumar.
The constituency, where both Congress-led UDF and CPM-led LDF interchangeably won multiple times in the past seven decades, is currently held by Congress.
Though the Congress's first choice for Thrissur was its sitting MP TN Prathapan, it had to rethink the choice when K Padmaja Venugopal, Karunakaran's daughter, defected to the BJP. Muralidharan was shifted from Vatakara, another constituency in Kerala where he is sitting MP, to Thrissur.
Padmaja is quite active in the Constituency campaigning for Suresh Gopi.
In the 2019 general election, Prathapan won the constituency garnering 39.83 per cent of vote share. Rajaji Mathew Thomas of CPI came second. Though Suresh Gopi came third, he garnered nearly 30 per cent of the polled votes despite the late announcement of his candidature giving him hardly 20 days for the election campaign.
However, this time BJP started campaigning early with Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding his first roadshow in Thrissur. PM Modi also made another visit to the constituency to attend the wedding of Gopi's daughter at Guruvayoor Srikrishna Temple.
Though LDF's Sunilkumar is quite popular in the constituency, the scam in the CPI (M) controlled Karuvannur Cooperative Bank is being raised in the campaigns of others in the fray.
PM Modi himself raised this issue while he campaigned for the BJP candidate. The UDF also put the LDF on the defensive by making this a campaign issue.
The parliamentary constituency consists of assembly constituencies such as Thrissur, Ollur, Pudukkad, Irinjalakuda, Manalur, Nattika and Guruvayur.
The constituency has a considerable Christian population with the Catholic community accounting for 35 per cent of the region's population.
BJP hopes that its leaders' including the Prime Minister's recent reach out to the Christian community will give them a political dividend.
However, UDF and LDF hit back at the BJP pointing out the Manipur riots, where, they allege, many Christian churches were demolished by the rioters in "collaboration" with the BJP government in the state.
All 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in Kerala will go to the polls on April 26. The results will be announced on June 4.