BJP’s surprise choice to face Priyanka in Wayanad bypolls

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) surprise choice for the Wayanad Lok Sabha bypolls,Navya Haridas, is a former software professional whose entry into mainstream politics was through a challenging grassroots-level electoral contest in 2015.

A native of Kozhikode town, Navya had just come home on a holiday from abroad, where her husband worked, that year.

“At that time, the local body elections in Kerala had been announced and the corporation ward where I lived was reserved for women. Hailing from a BJP family, the party asked if I was interested in contesting. It was a ward where the BJP always ended up third behind UDF and LDF. The party leaders told me to give it a chance. If I lost, I could go back abroad,” Navya told HT over phone on Sunday.

But when the votes were counted, to everyone’s surprise, Navya won the Karapparamb ward in the Kozhikode Municipal Corporation by a margin of 120 votes. Navya said she decided to stay back and become more active in politics, rising slowly up the ladders of the BJP in the state.

“Over the next five years, I worked hard as a councillor. There was shortage of drinking water in my ward. I was able to utilise the funds of the centrally sponsored scheme, AMRUT, to solve the issue. I looked into issues of all the people in my ward equally without any discrimination,” she said.

In the 2020 local body polls, her efforts paid off as she posted a dominant victory in the corporation ward by a margin of over 500 votes, cementing her party’s position there, she said. Navya is currently one among the seven BJP councillors in the 75-member corporation.

In the 2021 assembly elections, the 39-year-old was again picked by the party for a challenging contest in the Kozhikode South seat. She ended up third behind LDF and UDF nominees, but was able to increase her party’s vote share in the minority-dominated constituency by nearly 5%.

Three years later, the Mahila Morcha state general secretary has been tapped again in what will be the toughest election of her career. Navya faces Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and CPI national council member Sathyan Mokeri in Wayanad, a Lok Sabha seat that the Congress has always won after it was created in 2009.

“It really was a surprise for me. I am thankful to the party’s state and central leadership for choosing me to fight such an important election. The contest is getting nationwide attention and I am very happy,” Navya told HT.

When asked about her chances, the young BJP leader said, “I am quite confident. I am not nervous and I am aware of the existing vote shares of the three parties. The competition will be between me and Priyanka. This election is a forced one because Rahul Gandhi chose not to retain Wayanad. I will raise critical issues of the constituency before the people and they will decide.”

Navya said that there are decades-old problems in the constituency that remain unaddressed.

“The need for a full-fledged government medical college in the district is strong. There are limitations in infrastructure and agricultural sectors in the district. The issue of man-animal conflict has not been resolved by the state government or the local MP,” she said.

There is hope for the BJP in the minority-dominated constituency, she said, pointing to the party’s performance in the last election. “When state president K Surendran contested, the party’s vote share went up from 7% to 13%. The party has grown,” she said.