K Surendran, the state president of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Kerala has faced his 9th electoral defeat by finishing third in the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala, where he took on two heavy weight candidates - Rahul Gandhi of the Congress and Annie Raja of the Communist Party of India (CPI). But in the course of electoral misadventures over the years, Surendran has also helped his party grow incrementally and create a favourable electoral climate for future candidates.
In Wayanad, where victory of Rahul Gandhi was a foregone conclusion, Surendran's candidacy helped the BJP gain some attention itself, nationally. It also helped the party nearly double its votes. Surendran received a total of 1,41,045 votes, upping the share of BJP to 13%. While Rahul clocked 59.6% of the votes, Annie Raja received 26%.
The only time K Surendran came close to a win was in 2016, when he contested the Manjeshwar Lok Sabha constituency against PB Abdul Razak of Indian Union Muslim (IUML) and lost by a margin of 89 votes resulting in a legal challenge. It was a long way from 2009 when he lost to P Karunakaran of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 2009, for a margin of 2.6 lakh votes, when he debuted as a candidate.
Between 2009 and 2024, Surendran has contested four Lok Sabha polls and five elections to the Kerala Assembly, including a bypoll. He lost every one of them though he had been improving his electoral performance steadily since 2016. In the process Surendran also helped enhance the vote share for the BJP in Kerala and the party's prospects in many constituencies.
In 2021, when elections were held to the Kerala Assembly he contested from two seats Manjeshwar in Kasaragod and Konni in Pathanamthitta district, which angered his critics inside the party. In Manjeswhar, his margin of loss to AKM Ashraf of IUML was a mere 745 votes.
But it was the constituency of Konni in Pathanamthitta, where BJP had high hopes for because of the polarisation around the entry of women into Sabarimala. He however lost to KU Jenish Kumar of the CPI(M) by a margin of more than 29,000 votes, polling fewer votes than what he gained in 2019, when the constituency witnessed a bypoll. The vote share of the party also dropped by nearly 7%.
During the Wayanad campaign Surendran had criticised Annie Raja and Rahul Gandhi stating that they are on tourist visas while he is a permanent citizen. He also raked up a controversy by claiming that Sultan Bathery town, named after Tipu Sultan, will be renamed as Ganapathy Vattam if he wins.