With Rajeev Chandrasekhar hitting Thiruvananthapuram base, has Shashi Tharoor finally got a challenger?

Thiruvananthapuram, March 5 (IANS) A battle royal is in the offing at the prestigious Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency with all the three political fronts gearing up, but the match to watch out for could be between sitting MP Shashi Tharoor and BJP's Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

Last week the BJP announced its candidate, Union Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who arrived here on Monday night to a rousing welcome by the party workers. The Minister was taken in a convoy of hundreds of vehicles from the airport to the heart of the capital city.

The CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front has brought in former Thiruvananthapuram MP, Paniyan Ravindran, a veteran CPI leader.

Ravindran won a bypoll from the same seat in 2005 after sitting member, former Chief Minister and CPI stalwart P.K. Vasudevan Nair passed away.

The Congress is yet to announce its candidates' list, but none has a doubt about who it could be, as it is certain that Shashi Tharoor will be defending his seat for the fourth straight time .

A former Undersecretary General at the United Nations, Shashi Tharoor was a surprise choice when he flew into India and after meeting the then Congress top brass secured a party ticket to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha polls from Thiruvananthapuram.

Since then he has completed a hat-trick of wins and the only difficult time he had to face was in 2014 after the untimely death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar at a plush hotel in Delhi.

In the 2019 polls he won with a margin of 99,989 votes, while in 2014 the margin was 15,470 and in his debut election in 2009 it was 99,998 votes.

Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, though a Malayalee has always been based out of Bengaluru, is no stranger to Keralites. His name has been associated with the BPL TV after he married the company founder’s daughter. He was part of the then premier electronics company from 1994 till he sold his stakes in 2005.

Soon after the Union Minister landed here Monday night he hit the campaign trail and said his focus will be to turn the state into a major IT hub.

“Even though the capital city had the first IT park, Technopark, it has not reached to the level where it should have been,” said Chandrasekhar.

This election is going to be more of a clash of personalities between the Congress and the BJP.

Incidentally, in the 2019 polls, the BJP finished as runner up here, while in the remaining 19 seats in the state, they had to be content with a distant third position.