The 2026 Kerala Assembly election campaign appears to be a relatively tame affair compared to the scandal-supercharged, high-octane 2021 polls.
The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government set the tone for the bruising 2021 campaign by dropping a political bombshell at the hustings.
The then government promulgated an extraordinary notification authorising the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe at least five top Congress leaders, including the United Democratic Front (UDF)’s star campaigner and former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, on the charge of rape.
The order seemed politically timed. It was based on a complaint filed by Sarita S. Nair, a high-profile entrepreneur accused in the sensational solar case, an investment fraud scam. The fraud had bedevilled the previous Oommen Chandy government and given the LDF a leg-up in the 2016 polls.
Ms. Nair alleged that top politicians in the 2016 UDF government had extorted sexual favours from her. In return, they offered State patronage for her business. While not central to the 2021 LDF campaign, Ms. Nair’s accusation served a political purpose for the LDF government. The CBI inquiry resurrected the case, a seemingly persistent bugbear for the Opposition. The agency later acquitted the accused, including Oommen Chandy, of wrongdoing.
The LDF appeared to have perceived a political purpose in ordering the CBI probe. The government was under heavy fire for “escorting women activists” to the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple based on the 2019 Supreme Court’s decision to allow women of menstruating age to worship at the temple.
Supported by powerful Hindu social organisations, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) turbocharged the ‘Save Sabarimala Campaign.’ The movement was belligerent and highly emotive, putting the first Pinarayi Vijayan government on the defensive.
The then Opposition had beset the LDF with corruption charges ranging from selling citizens’ health information to big data companies using COVID-19 as cover, graft in the LIFE housing mission for the poor, licensing for breweries and distilleries, palming off Kerala’s marine wealth to foreign fishing fleets, to surreptitiously allowing sand-mining in the upper reaches of the Pampa river.
The BJP also echoed most of the UDF’s charges, leading to stormy street protests against the government, often perilously disregarding COVID-19 restrictions. Several of the accusations did not pass muster in court, though they gave the Opposition an election propaganda advantage in 2021.
However, the overarching narrative that would explode at the hustings was in the offing. The LDF government did not bargain that the confiscation of 30 kg of contraband gold from an air baggage consignment linked to former UAE consulate staff in Thiruvananthapuram in 2021 would become a ticking political time bomb.
At the centre of the controversy was Swapna Suresh, a person well-versed in Arabic, English and other languages, who stalked the corridors of power, given her key position at the UAE consulate in Thiruvananthapuram. Ms Suresh came into the public eye during the 2017 visit of Sultan Bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, Emir of Sharjah, to Thiruvananthapuram. 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 for Sharjah officials during the dignitaries’ visit.
Ms. Suresh’s alleged proximity to the then Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, M. Sivasankar, and her “easy familiarity” with centres of power gave the Congress and the BJP the whip hand to scourge the LDF government.
Soon, stories of contraband gold concealed in dates, camouflaged as biriyani vessels, and in Korans, reaching Kerala with the covert blessings of the political executive via the Dubai consulate, dominated the election campaign, further coarsening the period’s recriminatory election bombast.
The BJP sought to seize the upper hand by politically capitalising on the National Investigation Agency (NIA) raid, which netted Ms. Suresh in Bengaluru. The Customs, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, and the Enforcement Directorate, in turn, arrested, interrogated, and remanded Ms. Suresh and Mr. Sivasankar in judicial custody. Ms. Suresh and Mr. Sivasankar appeared to represent everything that had “gone wrong” with the LDF government.
However, the Opposition charges broke like a wave against the LDF’s narrative of effective pandemic management, COVID-19-era welfare measures, disaster response (flood relief), and good governance. The LDF defied political gravity and stormed back to power in 2021.
As Kerala moves into another election, past scandals and dramatis personae that animated the fiery 2021 campaign have slipped into obscurity. It seemed they had served their political purpose.
The Customs and Enforcement Directorate cases related to the gold smuggling appeared to have reached a dead end, possibly due to the diplomatic sensitivities involved. The Central probe did not reach the Chief Minister’s Office, as the Congress and BJP tomtommed.
The 2021 results indicated that consequential questions about politics, policy and livelihood had more traction among voters than shallow scandal-mongering.
Election-time political scandals seem to have a short lifespan in Kerala. Solar and UAE gold smuggling scandals have met the same fate as the 1990 ISRO espionage case, the Suryanelli sex scandal and the Ice cream parlour case. However, the ephemeral sensational value of scandals, especially sordid ones, will likely endure, and perhaps animate future election cycles.
Published – March 31, 2026 09:57 am IST
