Thrissur/IBNS: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may not have managed to touch the magic figure of 272 mark on its own, but it surely made inroads in the southern state of Kerala in this Lok Sabha elections.

National award-winning actor Suresh Gopi won the Thrissur Lok Sabha seat for the saffron party, ensuring its opening of account in Kerala.

Up against two strong candidates in the CPM's VS Sunilkumar and the Congress' K Muraleedharan, Gopi managed to win the seat by 74,686 seats.

Exit polls had also predicted a win for the actor but his rivals had said it would not happen. Gopi had contested from the constituency in 2019 as well but had come third, losing to the Congress' TN Prathapan by a margin of 1.2 lakh votes.

He had also fought from the Thrissur Assembly constituency in 2021, coming third again, but losing by a margin of less than 4,000 votes.

Gopi had focused on the constituency during his stint in the Rajya Sabha between 2016 and 2022, which seems to have finally yielded dividends.

In 2022, Gopi landed in a controversy when he distributed 'kaineettam', a gift of coins or small amounts of money, during the harvest festival of Vishu. He was distributing the gifts from a car while people, including women, touched his feet to seek his blessings.

The actor was criticised for allowing people to touch his feet, but he responded by dismissing his critics as an "army of irritating tadpoles".

A recent harassment case, filed by a woman journalist, was also a challenge as was a controversy that arose after the actor and his family offered a golden crown to a cathedral in Thrissur.

Clinching a historic yet reduced-majority election victory for a record-equalling third straight term, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday thanked his allies Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu as he headed to lead a coalition government of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) depending on the two regional leaders.

With a slew of exit polls that gave a clear majority to Modi proving wrong, even in the win of the NDA, the celebrations are louder in the opposition INDIA Bloc led by Congress after they bagged a higher-than-expected number of seats.