"Hope For Fair, Gentlemanly Contest": Shashi Tharoor On Thiruvananthapuram's Three-Cornered LS Battle

Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India] : Affirming that the elections for Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram parliamentary seat are going to be a 'three-cornered fight' with candidates of the BJP and left parties in the fray for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Congress leader and current sitting MP Shashi Tharoor on Thursday expressed hope for a fair and gentlemanly electoral contest.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar while CPM-led LDF has fielded CPI leader Pannyan Raveendran from the constituency, who had won it in 2005.

Even though the BJP has never been able to win a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, Tharoor who is likely to be a Congress candidate once again said that the ruling party at the centre have to be taken seriously as it managed to be at the second number in the last two Lok Sabha elections.

"First, it is a three-cornered contest because the Communists have already named their candidate. Don't forget that I took the seat from the Communist Party and the gentleman who is the candidate now, was the sitting MP when I came into the fray. He did not contest again at that time and it has now been 15 years that he is out of the fray...BJP has come second in the last two Lok Sabha elections. So, they have to be taken seriously..." Tharoor said.

He further said that the public will decide who they want to represent in Delhi.

"I am hoping it will be a fair and gentlemanly electoral contest. I don't think that I have needed, in my 15 years in politics, to ever attack any of my critics. I welcome them all, I welcome the opponents. Let the public decide who they want to represent them in Delhi," the Congress MP said.

Meanwhile, BJP candidate for Thiruvananthapuram, Rajeev Chandrasekhar took a dig at the Congress and the left alleging that both the parties had done little for the youth.

"Both the INDI partners - Congress and CPM are same in terms of creating opportunities for youth - ZERO Kerala and Thiruvananthapuram's development and dreams of its youth and women hv been held hostage by TWO defunct and inept ideologies of Congress and Left and we need to change that" he posted on X.

Senior Congress leader and ex-Union minister Shashi Tharoor has been winning the Thiruvananthapuram seat since 2009. He is now set to be nominated by the Congress for his fourth bid.

The BJP has never been able to win a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala. In the Assembly polls, the party won only once from Nemam in Thiruvananthapuram district, where O Rajagopal had won in 2016.

In the 2019 polls, the BJP's Kummanam Rajasekharan had won 31.3 per cent votes, the highest among what the BJP got in the 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state.

However, Chandrasekhar's plunge into the capital fray has turned it into a triangular affair, which will be one of the most watched battles in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls which are expected to be held in April-May this year.