LS polls: Tharoor hits campaign trail in Thiruvananthapuram on Palm Sunday

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the Lok Sabha elections barely a few weeks away, Congress MP and the party's Thiruvananthapuram candidate, Shashi Tharoor, hit the campaign trail by participating in a Palm Sunday event. On Palm Sunday, Christians commemorate Jesus going to Jerusalem on a donkey for the celebration of Passover.

Speaking to ANI on Sunday, the Congress MP said, "Palm Sunday marks the beginning of a week in which Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Sunday, had his famous last supper on Wednesday, betrayed and arrested on Thursday, and then crucified on Friday. Then there is Easter Sunday, which commemorates his resurrection. This whole week is extremely important to our Christian constituents."

The Lok Sabha elections are scheduled to be held on April 26 in the state. Tharoor, the sitting MP from Thiruvananthapuram, is pitted against Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar. Chandrasekhar, who saw out his term in Rajya Sabha earlier this year, is marking his foray into the Lok Sabha elections. However, he faces a formidable opponent in the form of the suave Congressman and former top diplomat, who has been representing Thiruvananthapuram in the Lower House of Parliament for the last 15 years.

The ruling Left has also jumped into the fray in Thiruvananthapuram, with the CPI, a partner in the ruling LDF in the state, fielding Pannyan Raveendran. Despite being a partner in the Opposition bloc--INDIA, the CPI announced nominees for both Wayanad, from where Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is bidding for a second straight term in the Lower House, and Thiruvananthapuram.

Voicing his misgivings over the CPI entering the fray in Thiruvananthapuram, earlier, Tharoor accused the Left of helping the BJP by way of engineering a split in the Opposition vote share. To Tharoor's remark, asking the Left to practise 'alliance dharma', the CPI retorted that he should 'look in the mirror' while also questioning his grasp of coalition politics.

The CPI, earlier, made it clear that it wasn't amused over the Congress fielding Rahul from Wayanad again, with senior party leader and former MP D Raja saying that while the grand old party was well within its rights to field whoever it wished to, the sitting MP from Wayanad, being a national leader, should have contested a seat where he was pitted directly against the BJP.

In the 2019 general elections, Tharoor emerged victorious with 4,16m131 votes (41.4 per cent of the total votes polled) over the BJP's Kummanam Rajasekharan with 4,16,131 votes (31.4 per cent vote share) and the Communist Party of India's C. Divakaran with 2,58,556 votes (25.7).

Earlier, in 2014, Tharoor trounced BJP's O. Rajagopal. Kerala sends 20 members to the Lok Sabha. The BJP is yet to win a seat in the Lower House from the southern state. The Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency comprises six Assembly segments--Nemom, Kovalam, Neyyattinkara, Parassala, Vattiyoorkav, and Kazhakkoottam.