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Published Jan 10, 2026 | 7:41 PM ⚊ Updated Jan 10, 2026 | 7:41 PM
The ISJD is seeking the wheel (chakra) as its electoral symbol — a nod to VP Singh’s Janata Dal and socialist legacy.
With Assembly elections looming in Kerala, the state unit of the Janata Dal (Secular) has chosen survival over schizophrenia — and the cure, after three years of political discomfort, is a brand-new party with an old socialist soul.
The Kerala unit of the JD(S), awkwardly wedged between a BJP-led NDA at the national level and a CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) in the state, has decided to quietly exit the contradiction by changing its identity.
Enter the Indian Socialist Janata Dal (ISJD), a freshly registered party that will formally absorb the JD(S) in Kerala and allow its two MLAs to stay exactly where they are — in the Left Front.
The move is being packaged as an ideological recommitment to socialism.
But behind the slogans of Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan lies a far more practical political calculation: avoiding disqualification, sparing the LDF further embarrassment, and preventing the JD(S) in Kerala from being reduced to a constitutional absurdity.
For nearly three years, the Kerala JD(S) lived with what many in the Left privately called a “split personality disorder”.
While HD Deve Gowda’s party embraced the BJP in Karnataka and eventually joined the NDA nationally — culminating in HD Kumaraswamy becoming a Union Cabinet minister after winning Mandya in 2024 — the Kerala unit continued as a loyal LDF ally, even holding a ministerial berth through K Krishnankutty.
The contradiction was politically embarrassing for the LDF, ideologically indefensible for the JD(S), and legally risky for its two MLAs — Mathew T Thomas (Thiruvalla) and Krishnankutty (Chittoor).
Align with the national leadership and they would have had to exit the Left Front; reject it openly and they risked losing the party’s legal cover.
Defection laws loomed large in both scenarios.
The workaround they discovered was deceptively simple: form a new party, merge into it, and carry everyone along without technically “defecting”.
The idea was finalised as early as mid-2024, even before the local body elections.
A party named Indian Socialist Janata Dal was registered with 100 founding members based largely in Palakkad.
But Election Commission recognition took time, forcing the Kerala JD(S) to contest the civic polls using the familiar ‘a lady farmer carrying paddy on her head’ symbol — awkwardly the same symbol used by the JD(S) that now sits with the BJP elsewhere.
JD(S) symbol
That delay is now over.
With EC approval in hand, the formal merger of JD(S) into ISJD is set to be endorsed at a conference in Kochi on January 10, followed by the official public launch on January 17.
Both MLAs will move en bloc into the new party.
Mathew T. Thomas will continue as state president, and organisational elections will be postponed until after the Assembly polls — stability first, democracy later.
The ISJD is seeking the wheel (chakra) as its electoral symbol — a nod to VP Singh’s Janata Dal and socialist legacy.
Ironically, the symbol itself has been “frozen” for years by the Election Commission after successive Janata splinters laid claim to it.
If granted, the wheel would complete the circle of political nostalgia; if not, the party will still roll on with what it has.
Publicly, leaders insist this is about preserving socialist values in an era of ideological drift.
Privately, even JD(S) insiders at the state level concede the time for reconciliation with Deve Gowda has passed.
Meetings were held, objections raised, and reluctance expressed when the national leadership tilted towards the BJP.
Nothing changed.
With Assembly elections approaching, ambiguity had become unaffordable.
The Indian Socialist Janata Dal, then, is less a rebirth than a well-timed escape hatch — a legal innovation masquerading as ideological renewal.
In Kerala’s endlessly inventive political theatre, it may not be the boldest act, but it is certainly one of the neatest.
