On Monday, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar kicked off his campaign as the BJP’s candidate in Kerala’a Thiruvananthapuram with a bike rally. Chandrasekhar’s entry has turned the battle for the high-profile Thiruvananthapuram seat into a triangular contest between BJP, Congress and the CPM-led LDF in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
In the 2019 general elections, Shashi Tharoor, a senior Congress leader and ex-Union minister, won the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency by a margin of 99,989 votes, defeating Kummanam Rajasekharan of BJP. Tharoor has won the Thiruvananthapuram seat since 2009. The Congress leader is also set to be nominated by the Congress for his fourth bid.
Interestingly, the CPM-led LDF has fielded CPI leader Pannyan Raveendran from the constituency. Raveendran had won the seat in 2005. Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency is one of the 20 Lok Sabha (parliamentary) constituencies in Kerala. In the Lok Sabha Elections 2019, this constituency recorded 73.38 percent voter turnout with a total of 18 candidates in fray.
With various achievements in their respective fields, both Chandrasekhar, 59, and Tharoor, 67 are articulate leaders. Meanwhile, Raveendran, 78, has been positioning himself as an underdog.
According to a report by The Indian Express, the BJP is confident that it has fielded a candidate who can stand up to Tharoor’s stature. The party has set a target to win 370 seats in the Lok Sabha 2024 elections.
Both Chandrasekhar and Tharoor have a commendable way of navigating tough global issues with elan. Chandrashekhar has been the Minister of State for IT and Skill Development since July 2021 and he also possesses the skills of the corporate sector. He also has been a technology entrepreneur engaged in the semiconductor manufacturing sector.
According to the BJP, Chandrasekhar is its best bet for Thiruvananthapuram, an aspirational middle-class constituency. The constituency has a literacy rate of 84.37 percent.
Tharoor, on the other hand, is one of the most popular Congress leaders in Kerala. Despite his unsuccessful contest in the Congress presidential election in October 2022, the former UN diplomat’s popularity didn’t diminish. Moreover, he was able to retain his seat in the 2014 polls when he was faced with one of his toughest challenges following his wife Sunanda Pushkar’s demise.
Tharoor told IE that although he is confident that his track record as an MP since 2009 would be his biggest asset in this election too, he won’t take any election for granted.
Raveendran, the LDF candidate, has an image of a commoner. While Tharoor and Chandrasekhar are upper-caste Nairs, the LDF candidate is from a backward community.
The BJP has never managed to win a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala. In the Assembly elections, 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 percent votes which is the highest among what the BJP got in the 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state.
Chandrasekhar, a politically active minister in the Modi cabinet, is part of the BJP’s aim to make inroads into Kerala, where it had failed to win any seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Moreover, in one of his recent visits to Kerala, Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about the goal of achieving a two-digit figure in the state.
In December last year, Tharoor hinted that the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections may mark his final contest from the Thiruvananthapuram seat. The Congress party has not announced its list of candidates yet.
The dates of the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 are likely to be announced post-March 13 when the ELection Commission of India concludes its visits to all states to review the poll preparedness. The 2019 polls were conducted in seven phases and voting for the first phase took place in the second week of April.