After 15 years of representing Thiruvananthapuram in the Lok Sabha Shashi Tharoor has for the fourth consecutive time won the seat, defeating his nearest rival Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a sitting Union minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet by a margin of 16,077 votes. Communist Party of India’s Pannyan Raveendran was relegated to the third place in a high-voltage contest.
Tharoor’s victory became certain only in the second half of the day, with Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Rajeev Chandrasekhar leading the race in the morning for hours. At one point, Chandrasekhar had a lead of over 20,000 votes over Tharoor, whose leads began to accrue only in the last few rounds of counting. Tharoor won 358155 votes and Chandrasekhar 342078 votes, while Pannyan came in third place with 247648 votes.
The tight contest was reminiscent of the 2014 elections when O Rajagopal of the BJP had the lead in the earlier half of the day, but Tharoor ended up winning with a relatively small majority of over 15,000 votes. However, in the 2019 elections he gained the nearly one lakh majority he had in the 2009 elections, beating Kummanam Rajasekharan of the BJP.
By late afternoon, when his victory became certain, Shashi Tharoor said that Thiruvananthapuram was one of the few constituencies that the BJP had concentrated on in Kerala. "They invested a lot in these constituencies, which included Thrissur and Thiruvananthapuram. We should measure the victory margin of Thiruvananthapuram, by taking into account the majority with which they won Thrissur (where BJP's Suresh Gopi won by over 74,000 votes). They could do it in one place. But we could stop them in other because of the people in Thiruvananthapuram, because of their big-heartedness, their values and beliefs."
The electoral contest for the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram was one of the most keenly watched fights in Kerala for being one of the constituencies where the BJP, which had never won a seat from Kerala before, launched a campaign blitzkrieg with a sitting Union minister. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself flew down to the capital for multiple roadshows for candidates in Thiruvananthapuram and nearby Attingal, where another Union minister V Muralidharan was in fray and the party left no stones unturned in its attempt to conquer the constituency that had been giving it hope for years.
Tharoor had won the constituency in 2019 with a margin of more than one lakh over his nearest rival Kummanam Rajasekharan of the BJP. CPI's C Divakaran garnered close to 2.58 lakh votes. In the 2014 elections that brought Narendra Modi to power, the BJP’s candidate in Thiruvananthapuram O Rajagopal had given a tight contest to Shashi Tharoor. His vote share had diminished but Tharoor votes soared in 2019. BJP’s electoral comfort so far is Rajagopal’s win from Nemom, an assembly seat that comes under the Thiruvananthapuram constituency.
With Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s entry into the fray this year, the campaign suddenly rose to new levels, big hoardings and election offices of the BJP candidate springing up in all parts of the city. Soon enough, cash-for-vote allegations also rose against him, for which a legal tussle ensued between Chandrasekhar and Tharoor.
As his rivals made big news across the country, Pannyan Raveendran, the veteran Communist, did not remain quiet, covering every nook and corner of the constituency on his campaign vehicle, with his fiery and witty speeches. Known for being a consistent presence for every major event in Thiruvananthapuram, Panniyan had the vibes of a friendly neighbourhood man that he flaunted during his campaign. All through his campaign he spoke about BJP’s misgovernance for the past 10 years, occasionally taking potshots at Tharoor for the Congress candidate’s criticism of him.
