Rajeev Chandrasekhar set to take over as Kerala BJP president; central leadership backs nomination-OxBig News Network

Former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) central leadership is learnt to have nominated entrepreneur-turned-politician and former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar as the next president of the party’s Kerala unit. Mr Chandrasekhar, who attended the party’s core committee meeting in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday (March 23, 2025), is expected to file his nomination for the president’s post at the BJP’s State headquarters at Mararji Bhavan in Thiruvananthapuram later in the day.

He will unlikely face any opposition, and BJP leaders appeared confident that Mr Chandrasekhar’s election to the post will be unanimous. Pralhad Joshi, the BJP’s central observer, and Prakash Javedkar, the party’s Kerala-in-charge, announced Mr Chandrasekhar’s name at the core committee meeting.

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Mr Chandrasekhar is slated to take over the party’s reins from incumbent K. Surendran, who has led it since 2020. Mr Chandrasekhar’s elevation as the BJP State President is, in a way, an acknowledgement of his strong performance in the high-profile 2024 Lok Sabha elections in the Thiruvananthapuram constituency, where he gave a close fight to Congress leader Shashi Tharoor. Until then, Mr Chandrasekhar was based in Karnataka, a State he represented in the Rajya Sabha for three terms. He then shifted his base to Kerala to mount a challenging election campaign.

By appointing him, the BJP seeks to widen its base, especially among the aspirational younger crowd whom Mr. Chandrasekhar had explicitly targeted in his Lok Sabha campaign. Moreover, Mr Chandrasekhar’s elevation to the post comes at a crucial time, when the BJP is mobilising its election machinery from the booth level upwards to fight the local body polls and the Assembly elections in 2026.

In the mid-1990s, Mr.Chandrasekhar was one of the tech entrepreneurs who launched BPL Mobile, tapping into the emerging field of mobile telephony. Though he exited the sector a decade later, he founded Jupiter Capital, an investment and financial services firm that now manages assets across several sectors. Later, Mr Chandrasekhar also took over control of Asianet News, one of Malayalam’s current top news channels. In the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, he was the Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, and Jal Shakti.

The Kerala Police had in 2023 registered cases against him on charges of making communally instigative social media posts in connection with the blasts at a prayer convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses at Kalamassery in Kochi.

Other than Mr Chandrasekhar, the names of State general secretary M.T. Ramesh, current State vice-president Sobha Surendran, former State president and former Union minister V. Muraeedharan, and incumbent president Mr Surendran as likely candidates for the BJP State president’s post were in active circulation in the public domain. However, the decks turned in his favour with the central leadership backing Mr Chandrasekhar. The Bharath Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), an ally of the BJP in Kerala, is also learnt to have supported his elevation as the State president.