The constituency holds significant importance for the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has described it as the “Gujarat of Kerala,” as it delivered the party its first, and so far only, Assembly victory in the state in 2016. Chandrasekhar’s opponent is V Sivankutty of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Kerala is set to vote in a single phase on April 9, with results scheduled to be announced on May 4.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar was born on May 31, 1964, in Ahmedabad to Air Commodore MK Chandrasekhar and Valli Chandrasekhar. He studied electrical engineering at the Manipal Institute of Technology and completed a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He also completed an Advanced Management Programme at Harvard University.
He then worked at Intel in the US as a design engineer and was part of teams working on the 80486 and Pentium processors. Returning to India, he married Anju Chandrasekhar, daughter of BPL Group founder TPG Nambiar, in 1991. He worked in the family business before founding BPL Mobile in 1994.
In 2005, he sold his 64% stake in BPL Communications to the Essar Group for .1 billion and launched Jupiter Capital with 0 million, which now manages over 0 million across technology, media, hospitality, and entertainment.
In 2006, Chandrasekhar was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka as an independent. He served as the youngest president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in 2008 and was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2012 for a second term. He served as an Independent from 2006 to 2018, with support from the Janata Dal (Secular) and BJP, before formally joining the government led by Narendra Modi in 2018.
The same year, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha as a BJP member from Karnataka. Two years later, Chandrasekhar was appointed national spokesperson of the BJP. In 2021, he became Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology and Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. In March 2025, he was appointed president of the BJP’s Kerala unit.
His candidature from Nemom marks a high-stakes contest for the BJP as it seeks to consolidate and expand its political footprint in Kerala, with the outcome expected to carry significant implications for the party’s long-term strategy in the state.
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