What’s China got to do with elections in India’s southernmost town?

India’s mammoth elections reached the country’s southernmost parliamentary constituency on Thursday, where an unlikely factor could prove decisive – the country’s battle with China for maritime trade supremacy.

Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu state is the proposed site of a new US$4.8 billion international container transshipment port being promised by the area’s current elected representative Pon Radhakrishnan, the outgoing junior minister of shipping who is seeking re-election under the banner of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Analysts see the planned port as one of several attempts by India to take trade away from Sri Lanka’s Port of Colombo – the busiest in South Asia.

Yet the neighbouring nation to the southeast already has additional capacity in the form of Hambantota port – a project financed under Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative” that was handed over to a Chinese company on a 99-year lease after Sri Lanka was unable to service the debts it incurred during construction.

When combined with a new container terminal in the Port of Colombo that was part-financed by the same Chinese company that now runs Hambantota, China has a regional foothold that will be difficult for India to dislodge, according to S N Srikant, founder of maritime consultancy Hauer Associates.