The 2026 Kerala Assembly election campaign appears to be a relatively tame affair compared to the scandal-laden, high-octane polls of 2021.
The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government has set the tone for a marred campaign in 2021 by dropping a political bombshell on thugs.
The then government issued an emergency notification authorizing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate at least five top Congress leaders, including star United Democratic Front (UDF) and former chief minister Oommen Chandy, on rape charges.
The order seemed politically timed. This was on the basis of a complaint filed by Sarita S. Nair, a prominent businesswoman accused in the sensational solar investment fraud case. The scam bedeviled the previous Oommen Chandy government and enabled the LDF in the 2016 polls.
Ms Nair alleged that top politicians in the UDF government in 2016 extorted sexual favors from her. In return, they offered state patronage for her business. While Ms. Nair’s allegation was not central to the LDF’s 2021 campaign, it served a political purpose for the LDF government. The CBI investigation resurrected the case, a seemingly persistent bugbear for the opposition. The agency later cleared the accused, including Oommen Chandy, of wrongdoing.
The LDF seemed to perceive a political purpose in ordering the CBI probe. The government has come under heavy fire for “escorting women activists” to the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple following the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision to allow women of menstrual age to worship at the temple.
The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), backed by powerful Hindu social organizations, were crowdfunding the “Save Sabarimala Campaign”. The movement was militant and highly emotional and put the first Pinarayi Vijayan government on the defensive.
The then opposition dogged the LDF with allegations of corruption ranging from the sale of citizens’ health information to big data companies that used COVID-19 as a cover, to the granting of licenses to breweries and distilleries, to the awarding of Kerala’s marine wealth to foreign fishing fleets to the secret permitting of sand mining on the upper reaches of the Pampa River.
The BJP has also echoed most of the UDF’s accusations, leading to violent street protests against the government, often dangerously ignoring COVID-19 restrictions. Some of the allegations did not hold up in court, although they gave the opposition an electoral propaganda advantage in 2021.
However, the overarching narrative that would explode at the hustings was nowhere in sight. The LDF government did not bargain that the 2021 seizure of 30 kg of smuggled gold from a shipment of air baggage linked to former employees of the UAE consulate in Thiruvananthapuram would become a ticking political time bomb.
At the center of the controversy was Swapna Suresh, a person well-versed in Arabic, English and other languages who had worked her way through the corridors of power because of her key position at the UAE consulate in Thiruvananthapuram. Ms. Suresh came to public attention during the visit of Sultan Bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, Emir of Sharjah, to Thiruvananthapuram in 2017. She gained traction in the upper echelons of the LDF government as a go-between for state bureaucrats and the UAE consulate, as well as Sharjah officials during visiting dignitaries.
Ms. Suresh’s alleged closeness to the then Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, M. Sivasankar, and her “easy knowledge” of the centers of power gave the Congress and the BJP a whip hand to whip the LDF government.
The election campaign was soon dominated by stories of smuggled gold hidden in data, disguised as biriyani vessels and in Korans reaching Kerala with the tacit blessing of the political executive through the Dubai consulate, further fueling the incriminating electoral bombshell of the time.
The BJP sought to gain an upper hand by capitalizing politically on the National Investigation Agency (NIA) raid that hit Ms. Suresh in Bengaluru. The Customs, Directorate of Tax Intelligence and Directorate of Enforcement in turn arrested, interrogated and sent Ms. Suresh and Mr. Sivasankar to judicial custody. Ms. Suresh and Mr. Sivasankar seemed to represent everything that was “wrong” with the LDF government.
However, the opposition’s accusations have broken like a wave against the LDF’s narrative of effective pandemic management, COVID-19 welfare measures, disaster response (flood relief) and good governance. The LDF defied political gravity and returned to power in 2021.
As Kerala approaches its next election, the past scandals and dramatis personae that animated the fiery 2021 campaign have slipped into obscurity. They seemed to have served their political purpose.
Customs and Enforcement Directorate cases related to gold smuggling appear to have hit a dead end, possibly due to diplomatic sensitivities. The central probe did not reach the chief minister’s office as the Congress and BJP tomtommed.
The 2021 results showed that follow-up questions about policy, politics and livelihoods had more appeal among voters than superficial scandals.
Election-time political scandals seem to be short-lived in Kerala. The UAE solar and gold smuggling scandals met the same fate as the 1990 ISRO espionage case, the Suryanelli sex scandal and the ice cream case. However, the ephemeral sensational value of scandals, especially dirty ones, is likely to persist and perhaps reinvigorate future election cycles.
Published – 31 Mar 2026 09:57 IST
