Lok Sabha elections: Thiruvananthapuram braces for high profile fight, voting on April 26

Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India], March 18 (ANI): One of the most high-profile constitituencies in this Lok Sabha election is Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. Three-time MP from the constituency Shashi Tharoor of the Congress is up against Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar of the BJP and a strong left candidate in Pannyan Raveendran a former MP.
Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency comprises six Assembly segments: Nemom, Kovalam, Neyyattinkara, Parassala, Vattiyoorkav, and Kazhakkoottam. Being the state with the highest literacy rate in the country, Kerala holds 20 Lok Sabha seats.
Congress' Shashi Tharoor believes that his work over the last 15 years in the constituency will speak for itself.
"I've served the people of Thiruvananthapuram for 15 years. They know me and have seen my service. It's not as if I've got anything to be ashamed of in my track record. I've been consistently available and attended to all the major issues," he said. "It's always been a three-cornered fight here because I took the seat from the LDF. They had won it two times before me and then in the last two times, the BJP came second. So we have to take both candidates seriously. I'm very confident that I would prevail," Shashi Tharoor said.
In 2019 general elections, Tharoor emerged victorious, gathering 416131 votes (41.4 per cent) of total votes, followed by BJP's Kummanam Rajasekharan--416131 votes (31.4) and Communist Party of India's C. Divakaran--258556 votes (25.7).
Similarly, in 2014, Shashi Tharoor emerged victorious, defeating BJP candidate O. Rajagopal.
The BJP has fielded Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar against Congress MP Tharoor. This is the first time that Chandrasekhar has been fielded for Lok Sabha polls.
He also served as a national spokesperson for the BJP.
"It is also my intention to present to them how the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and Modi government can change the trajectory of Thiruvananthapuram, from nothing happening in the last 10 years to making Thiruvananthapuram a place where technology, tourism, electronics, manufacturing, research and science that Anandapuri deserves," Rajeev Chandrasekhar said.
Pannyan Raveendran, the Left Democratic Front's Lok Sabha candidate from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency, said that the main fight in the constituency is between the LDF and the Congress-led UDF.
"The main contest is between LDF and UDF. BJP is irrelevant in Thiruvananthapuram," Pannyan Raveendran who won the constituency in 2005 told ANI.
Kerala will hold elections in a single phase on April 26. There are 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in Kerala and the BJP has never won a parliamentary seat in the state.
Earlier in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the NDA won 353 seats, the UPA stood at 91, and Others won 98. (ANI)