Kerala Election Results 2026: BJP's Rajeev Chandrasekhar wins Nemom seat with over 48,000 votes

Kerala Election Results 2026: Rajeev Chandrasekhar has won Nemom, and with it, delivered the BJP its best result in Kerala. The party's state president reclaimed the Thiruvananthapuram constituency after a decade, polling 48,995 votes and 40.35 per cent vote share, the NDA's strongest performance in the state this election cycle.

The win did not come easily, and it did not come from nowhere.

The seat and its significance

Nemom sits on the southern edge of Thiruvananthapuram, part of the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency. The area has changed considerably; what was once on the city's outskirts has been absorbed into its urban spread, now a mix of old neighbourhoods, new housing clusters and semi-urban pockets growing steadily into the city.

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But the constituency's political memory runs deeper than its physical transformation. It was here, in May 2016, that former Union Minister O Rajagopal became the first BJP MLA ever elected to the Kerala assembly, a moment that permanently changed how the seat was perceived, and how seriously rivals took the party's presence here.

2021: So close, yet not enough

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In 2021, the Left reclaimed the seat, but barely. CPI(M)'s V Sivankutty won with 55,837 votes, defeating BJP's Kummanam Rajasekharan by just 3,949 votes. K Muraleedharan finished third in what was a genuine three-way contest, and a result that told its own story. The Left could win Nemom. But the BJP was never far behind.

2026: A three-cornered battle with a clear winner

This year's contest again featured three credible candidates. Sivankutty, the sitting MLA, was defending the seat for the LDF. KS Sabarinadhan carried the UDF's hopes on a Congress ticket. And Chandrasekhar, Kerala BJP president, made his bid to restore the party's foothold in a seat it has long considered winnable.

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The result settled what 2021 had left open.

Why Nemom is different

Nemom's electorate is socially mixed, a Hindu majority alongside significant Christian and Muslim communities, with caste equations among Hindu voters becoming more visible over time. Civic concerns are immediate and personal here: water shortages, traffic, bad roads, drainage failures. In a constituency where margins are tight and governance lapses quickly become political liabilities, accountability is constant.

The BJP's rise in Nemom has not been abrupt. It has been built through consistent groundwork and organisation in key pockets over the years. In this constituency, leaders are expected to remain present between elections, not just during them. Familiarity and sustained engagement, not last-minute campaigning, tend to matter most.