Tremors of West Asian war will be felt in Kerala's ballot boxes

The war has grounded NRK voters, dried up party funds, and redrawn the electoral calculus of the 2026 Kerala Assembly polls

In the past three major elections in Kerala — the 2021 Assembly polls, the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, and the 2025 local body polls — a familiar ritual played out in the skies above the Arabian Sea. Thousands of Non-Resident Keralites (NRKs) boarded flights from airports across West Asia, some on chartered aircraft, most on tickets paid for out of their own savings, to Kerala with one goal in mind: voting for the candidate of their choice.

This time, however, things are different. The United States-Israel war on Iran that began on February 28, and Tehran’s retaliatory attacks on US military bases and infrastructure across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have plunged the region into its gravest crisis since the 1990-1991 Gulf War. Airspace closures, flight cancellations, safety fears, and the absence of adequate shelter facilities in several cities across the GCC have all but ensured that the massive NRK homeward rush, which has quietly shaped Kerala’s electoral outcomes for over a decade, will not materialise in any significant numbers this time around.

The 2026 Kerala Assembly polls will be decided almost entirely by those residing within the state.

Why NRK voters matter

According to the final electoral roll published on February 21, 2025, Kerala’s total electorate stands at 2,69,53,644. Of these, 2,23,558 are registered overseas voters, amounting to 0.83% of the electorate. The figure may appear modest in the aggregate, but its distribution is anything but even.

Men form about 85% of these overseas voters, and 66.8% of all registered NRK voters come from Kerala’s three northern districts: Kozhikode, Kannur, and Malappuram. These three also form the political heartland of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML). In constituencies where Assembly margins are often in the low thousands, even a fraction of this bloc can swing a result.

Who loses the most?

The party that stands to lose most directly is the IUML and, by extension, its Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF). In the 2021 Assembly polls, the IUML swept several key seats in these very high-migration area: Kondotty, Malappuram, Vengara, and Koduvally. Here, the NRK voters were a crucial component of the winning margins. Their absence this time will force the IUML to campaign more aggressively among resident voters.

It would, however, be a mistake to think that only the UDF will be hurt. The Left Democratic Front (LDF), too, has quietly relied on NRK votes in 30-odd northern and central Kerala seats. In the 2021 polls, LDF candidates won Kunnamangalam, Nadapuram, Taliparamba, and Payyannur, all constituencies where NRK votes play a vital role. This time, it is not going to be an easy task for the ruling LDF.

Flight cancelled

The war’s most immediate and visible impact on the NRK voters has been the collapse of air connectivity between West Asia and Kerala. Between late February and mid-March, Indian carriers cancelled over 350 flights. Kerala’s four international airports — at Kochi, Kozhikode, Kannur, and Thiruvananthapuram — were among the hardest hit.

Limited relief flights resumed from Muscat and Jeddah by early March, but full services remain curtailed, stranding thousands of NRKs who might otherwise have flown home to vote.

Fund crunch

The war has also dried up the money pipeline that fuels Kerala’s election campaigns. In every poll cycle, party representatives, including sitting legislators, fly to West Asia weeks before the polls to solicit donations from NRK businessmen. This is not a fringe activity: Gulf-based entrepreneurs, from cafeteria owners to mall operators, have been generous donors to both the LDF and the UDF.

That pipeline has now been severed. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows, has been effectively blocked, causing tanker traffic to collapse. QatarEnergy, Aluminium Bahrain, and Qatalum have declared force majeure. Brent crude has surged past $100 a barrel. Gulf stock indices have plunged. Tourism, valued at $367 billion annually for the GCC region, has taken a hit. Oxford Economics has downgraded its 2026 GCC GDP growth forecast by 1.8 percentage points, to 2.6%. Recession risks are mounting across the energy-dependent economies.

When the businesses that sustain Gulf-based NRKs are themselves in crisis, the idea of donating to a political party back home becomes an unaffordable luxury. Campaign spending across the board will be significantly lower this election, with consequences ranging from reduced billboard advertising to weaker ground-level mobilisation.

Migrant democracy

There is a painful irony in all of this. A substantial part of Kerala’s economy has been built on the backs of its NRKs. For decades now, remittances, especially from NRKs in West Asia, have propped up household consumption, real estate, banking deposits, and state revenue.

The 2026 polls, shaped by war and disruption, only deepen this paradox. The NRKs will watch the results from bunkers and cramped apartments in a conflict zone, unable to influence the outcome. And that is among the most troubling takeaways of this war: this war yet again reminds us how fragile and incomplete Kerala’s migrant democracy has always been.

Rejimon Kuttappan is a migrant rights activist, and author of Undocumented. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.