Thiruvananthapuram, June 22 (IANS): With Metro Man E. Sreedharan, who was a surprise choice of the BJP for the Assembly elections in Palakkad in 2021, now backing out from another contest, the BJP has started searching for a candidate for the soon-to-be-announced by-election.

The by-election in Palakkad was necessitated after sitting Congress legislator Shafi Parambil quit his seat after he won the Vadakara Lok Sabha seat.

In his debut election in 2021, the now 92-year-old Sreedharan managed to bring down the victory margin of Parambil from 17,483 in 2016 to just 3,859 votes.

The Kerala unit of the BJP is in an upbeat mood after the victory of Suresh Gopi from the Thrissur Lok Sabha constituency with an over 72,000 votes margin. The party that finished in second place in the Palakkad assembly constituency is confident that it will be able to open its account in the 140-member Kerala assembly too.

The names that the BJP is contemplating include that of Sobha Surendran who finished second in 2016 in Palakkad. After that, her status as a firebrand party leader increased hugely when she, though finishing third in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Attingal and in the 2024 polls from Alappuzha, garnered sizeable votes.

Another name that has started to get traction is Padmaja Venugopal, daughter of Congress veteran and four-time Chief Minister K. Karunakaran.

She joined the BJP from the Congress in March this year and had campaigned for Gopi in Trissur, where her brother and sitting MP, K.Muraleedharan finished third.

The Congress and the CPI-M have also started their search for candidates as it is going to be a fight to the finish for all three political fronts.