O Rajagopal

Early life

He was born on 15 September 1929 to Madhavan Nair and O Konhikkavu Amma of Olanchery Veedu at Pudukkode Panchayath in Palakkad. His early education took place in Kanakkannoor elementary school and Manjapra Upper Primary school and later went to Government Victoria College, Palakkad.

His Law education was undertaken in Madras and after he completed his studies in law, he began practicing law in 1956 at the Palakkad District Court.

Jana Sangh work

He was inspired by Deendayal Upadhyaya and began working in the Jana Sangh shortly after completing his studies. The death of Upadhyaya in 1968 spurred Rajagopal to pursue his public career more deeply. He was the State General Secretary of Jana Sangh until 1974. That same year, he was promoted to the post of President, a post he held until 1977.

In the Emergency period he was jailed with Mr V Velankutty Master (Palakkad District President of Jansangh) in Viyyur Central Jail. After the Indian emergency the Jana Sangh merged with the Janata Party. During this period of time Rajagopal served as the State General Secretary for the Jana Sangh.

BJP work

In 1980, the Janata Party split and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was formed. Rajagopal then served as its Kerala president until 1985. After 1985 he occupied a number of positions, including the All India Secretary, General Secretary, and the Vice-President of BJP. In 1989 he ran for a Lok Sabha from Manjeri but failed. Two years later, he attempted to run for the Thiruvananthapuram (Lok Sabha constituency) seat but failed again. His next run took place in the state of Madhya Pradesh. He was elected in 1992 and 1998 to the Rajya Sabha. In 1999 he attempted a second run from Thiruvananthapuram but failed again. However, he got a total of 1,58,221 votes (20.9%) and came second in one assembly segment out of seven. The total number of votes he secured was much higher than that for the BJP candidate in 1998 (94,303 votes, 12.3%) and 1996 (74,904, 10.4%) Loksabha elections. In 2004 Loksabha election, he again contested from Thiruvananthapuram parliament constituency and finished third, behind congress candidate V S Shivakumar (second position) and CPI candidate P K Vasudevan Nair (Winner). Even though, he was in the third position, he secured a total of 2,28,052 votes (29.9%) which was the highest votes secured by a BJP candidate in Kerala.

In the 2011 Assembly elections he contested from the Nemom constituency in Thiruvananthapuram, but eventually lost by a margin of 6,400 votes. He lost the by-election from Neyyattinkara constituency, which was held on 2 June 2012. However, he increased the BJP votes from 6,730 (2011 Assembly Election) to 30,507; an almost five-fold increase within a short span of one year. The BJP vote share also significantly increased from 6.0% (2011 Assembly Election) to 23.2%. He contested Loksabha election 2014 from Thiruvananthapuram constituency and finished second position after a neck-to-neck fight against the Congress candidate Dr Shashi Tharror who was former UPA Minister at the central government. He secured a total of 2,82,336 votes (32.3%) and lost the election battle by a sizeable margin of 15,470 votes (1.8%) against Dr Shashi Tharoor who secured a total of 2,97,806 votes. The CPI candidate Dr Bennet Abraham got 2,48,941 votes (28.5%).

In 2015 June he contested Aruvikkara by-election and lost by ending third, although his personal influence ensured that in the contest BJP increased votes from 7,694 to 34,145 causing division of anti-incumbency vote resulting in the victory of UDF. In the 2016 Assembly elections he again contested from Nemom, but this time, he entered the Kerala Legislative Assembly for the first time at the age of 87, defeating sitting MLA V. Sivankutty, by a Margin of 8,671 votes.