Former UN diplomat and Congress leader will be seeking a fourth straight term from Thiruvananthapuram constituency, as he is up against a two-front contest against Union Minister of State, Rajeev Chandrashekhar and Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Panniyan Ravindran.
Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Monday said that Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and CPI candidate Pannyan Raveendran did nothing for Thiruvananthapuram constituency during their respective tenures as Lok Sabha MP.
Congress' Lok Sabha candidate from Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Kerala, Shashi Tharoor, on Wednesday accused the BJP of hijacking democracy and urged other political parties to fight together to defeat it in the coming general election.
The union minister whom BJP has named from Thiruvananthapuram, while speaking to ANI, said that the candidates fielded against him "are more interested in fighting for the Muslim vote".
Pannyan Raveendran, 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 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar while CPM-led LDF has fielded CPI leader Pannyan Raveendran from the constituency, who had won it in 2005.