Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who is hoping to complete hat trick of getting elected to the Lok Sabha from the same seat, with a “bigger majority” this election season, spoke to BloombergQuint on the three-way fight in Thiruvanthapuram and the chances of the Congress forming the next government.
On BJP's Rajasekharan being his biggest challenger as against the CPI in the state, Tharoor said, "they (BJP) have made a big tactical mistake by focussing only on communal polarisation during the absurdly one-sided election campaign in the state."
"What has surprised many is that the Left has put up a pretty good fight, and at the moment, there is a solid fight between the BJP and the CPI, for the second place.. But that’s all the BJP is in contention for," Tharoor said as he highlighted his role in speaking up for an inclusive India on the national stage.
"We are looking at a very significant win," the Congress leader said, adding “the people of Thiruvananthapuram are voting about the future of India and they do not want the BJP to be a part of it."
The Communist Party of India (CPI) has fielded C Divakaran while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded Kummanam Rajasekharan against the Congress’ Shashi Tharoor from Thiruvanathapuram in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
Asked if the Sabarimala temple was a big poll issue in Kerala, Tharoor said "I don't think the voters in Kerala give as much importance to Sabarimala as the BJP."
“It was only in Thiruvananthapuram where 34 percent of the voters said it (Sabarimala) was the most important issue to them while everywhere else in the state (only 4-5 percent of the voters) considered it the main issue.”Tharoor said, citing a survey
"Everywhere else, people had the same issues as most of us – development, GST, unemployment, corruption by the government in Rafale deal, demonetisation, etc," he claimed.
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