Shashi Tharoor, senior Congress leader, branded the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a peripheral player in Kerala politics on Thursday (March 19) asserting it lacks the clout to even emerge as a kingmaker in the April 9 Assembly elections for 140 seats. In an interview before hitting the campaign trail, the Thiruvananthapuram Member of Parliament framed the contest squarely as a bipolar battle between the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and opposition United Democratic Front (UDF), with BJP’s gains limited to symbolic breakthroughs.
