Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 13 : The Kozhikode Lok Sabha constituency will see a battle of three seasoned political veterans from the three different political fronts.

The Congress has asked its veteran sitting member M. K. Raghavan to defend the seat, who in 2019, completed a hat trick from the constituency; and taking on him is versatile CPI-M sitting Rajya Sabha member and trade union leader Elamaram Kareem.

The BJP has brought back its stalwart M. T. Ramesh, who returns after his unsuccessful attempt in 2004.

Raghavan has had a few close shaves in his debut election, but has been steadily increasing his margin of victories from a mere 838 votes in 2009 to 16,883 in 2014, and in 2019, he had a comfortable win with a margin of 85,225.

This time, it remains to be seen on how his party cadres will respond as he was the closest associate when Shashi Tharoor sprang a surprise and contested for the post of its party president and lost.

Kareem, hails from the constituency and is a popular face after having had a few terms in the Kerala Assembly. He was also the state's Industries Minister once.

Another advantage on paper for Kareem is that out of the seven assembly segments in the Kozhikode Lok Sabha constituency, the ruling Left had won in five and the Congress-led UDF two in the 2021 assembly polls.

For Ramesh, a hugely popular leader especially among the RSS cadres, returns to contest after a gap of two decades. In 2004, he secured over 97,000 votes.

At the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the then BJP candidate got 1,61,216 votes.

With sizeable Muslim voters and with the CAA now coming into force, all eyes are on Kozhikode, waiting to see which way the Muslim votes turn and if Ramesh manages to increase the tally of BJP votes.

/IANS