BJP has fielded Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar against Congress MP Tharoor…reports Asian Lite News
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday alleged that the “only effect” of the CPI’s campaign against him in Thiruvananthapuram is to “divide the anti-BJP vote”.
In a post on X, the senior Congress leader said, “It’s ironic that the same @cpofindia that complains about @RahulGandhi’s candidature in Wayanad is playing the BJP’s game in Thiruvananthapuram”.
His post added: “The only effect of the CPI’s campaign against me in Thiruvananthapuram is to divide the anti-BJP vote. And they preach alliance dharma in Wayanad!”
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Reacting to this, CPI General Secretary D Raja said it is left that is “fighting the communal and fascist forces”.
“It is an absurd statement. An educated man like Shashi Tharoor must understand the history of Kerala properly. It is the Left that is fighting the communal and fascist forces…so many Congress leaders are leaving and joining BJP…,” he said.
Hitting back, the CPI leader questioned why is the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi contesting from Wayanad in Kerala.
“Rahul Gandhi claims that he is spearheading the fight against BJP, then why is he contesting from Wayanad and fighting against LDF? Congress must explain, what message they want to convey to people. Who are their main political enemies…,” Raja told ANI on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Tharoor believes that his work over the last 15 years in the constituency will speak for itself.
“I’ve served the people of Thiruvananthapuram for 15 years. They know me and have seen my service. It’s not as if I’ve got anything to be ashamed of in my track record. I’ve been consistently available and attended to all the major issues,” he said. “It’s always been a three-cornered fight here because I took the seat from the LDF. They had won it two times before me and then in the last two times, the BJP came second. So we have to take both candidates seriously. I’m very confident that I would prevail,” Shashi Tharoor said on Monday.
BJP has fielded Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar against Congress MP Tharoor.
Pannyan Raveendran, the Left Democratic Front’s Lok Sabha candidate from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency, said that the main fight in the constituency is between the LDF and the Congress-led UDF.
“The main contest is between LDF and UDF. BJP is irrelevant in Thiruvananthapuram,” Raveendran who won the constituency in 2005 told ANI on Tuesday.
Kerala will hold elections in a single phase on April 26. There are 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in Kerala and the BJP has never won a parliamentary seat in the state.
Earlier in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the NDA won 353 seats, the UPA stood at 91, and Others won 98. (ANI)
Alathur: A Prestige Battle For CPI(M), Congress
CPI(M) stakes prestige on popular face K. Radhakrishnan while Congress fields incumbent Remya Haridas to defend Alathur constituency.
Alathur Lok Sabha constituency, a reserved constituency this time, will witness an intense battle between the CPI(M) and the Congress.
The battle is prestigious for the CPI(M) as it has given the seat to one its most popular faces — State Minister of ST/SC and Devasoms K. Radhakrishnan, whose Assembly constituency Chelakara also is in Alathur.
The Congress has repeated its candidate, Remya Haridas, who has been asked to defend the seat.
While Alathur is in Palakkad district, this constituency has four Assembly constituencies from the district and three from the Trissur district.
The CPI(M)-led Left holds all the seven Assembly constituencies.
While Radhakrishnan, is a former Speaker of the Assembly and also a state minister when he won his debut election in 1996, Remya Haridas stole the limelight in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when she trounced sitting youth CPI(M) leader P.K. Biju, who was looking for a hat-trick win from Alathur.
Haridas, also a youth leader, walked into the hearts of her voters in 2019 by singing songs during her campaign. She won the seat with a massive margin of over 1.58 lakh votes.
“Yes, this time also I will reach out to my voters by singing songs and I don’t think there is anything wrong in it,” said Remya and started singing a few lines when she was spotted at her campaign.
But Radhakrishnan and the CPI(M) know that the margin that their seven candidates got from the Assembly polls in 2021, which fall in the Alathur Lok Sabha constituency, is in excess of two lakh votes and that’s their strength.
What has raised eyebrows is the BJP-led NDA is yet to announce their candidate and with Prime Minister Narendra Modi arriving at Palakkad on Tuesday, they are expected to announce the name soon.
At the 2019 polls, the BJP-led NDA candidate won around 89,000 votes.
Incidentally, Alathur constituency was formed in 2009 after being carved out from the erstwhile Ottapalam Lok Sabha constituency and nearby areas.
The Ottapalam Lok Sabha seat came into national reckoning as it was from here that the country’s former President K.R. Narayanan won three successive elections in 1984, 1989 and 1991 before occupying the top chair. In 1992 he became the Vice-President and five years later the President.
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