THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: What was perceived to be a tough three-cornered fight finally turned out to be a cakewalk for Thiruvananthapuram’s sitting MP Shashi Tharoor.
His facile victory by a convincing margin of close to one lakh votes was the result of a difficult balancing act in a constituency where community politics holds the key. On the one hand he could mobilise the disgruntled Hindu votes and on the other he won over the Muslim, Latin Catholic and Nadar voters. Tharoor’s huge majority was a shocker to the NDA which saw an erosion of votes in its traditional bastions.
Its candidate Kummanam Rajasekharan, who resigned as Mizoram Governor to contest the poll, had to contend with 3. 16 lakh votes. He could not even secure a majority in the Vattiyoorkavu Assembly segment where the NDA’s O Rajagopal came in first in the 2014 LS polls. Rajagopal had also garnered the maximum number of votes in the Nemom segment from where he was later elected to the Assembly.
LDF’s C Divakaran finished third by garnering 2.58 lakh votes. The veteran CPI leader could not come first in any of the seven assembly segments in the constituency. In four segments he had to contend with third position.
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The challenges faced by Tharoor during this elections were many. His opponents, chiefly the BJP, unleashed a campaign highlighting the ‘derogatory’ remarks on Nair women in his 1989 book “The Great Indian Novel”.
Tharoor countered this through a social media campaign wherein NSS founder Mannath Padmanabhan’s grandson vouched for him. Also, campaign posters with the image of his another book “Why Iam a Hindu”, were widely exhibited.
On one occasion Tharoor approached the Election Commission against the BJP and the Sabarimala Karma Samithi for bringing out posters to appease voters in the name of Sabarimala. But the biggest challenge for Tharoor was perhaps the non-cooperation of some senior Congress leaders in the capital. He survived it with the help of the broadcast media which ran reports on the lack of support faced by a star candidate of the party in the state. The victim’s image helped his reaffirm the support of local-level leaders and workers. Also, the Congress high command air-dashed senior leader Nana Patole to oversee the campaigning. Last of the serial challenges was however not man-made. Just a week ahead of the polling he suffered head injuries during the thulabharam ritual at a local temple. The weighing scale came off the hook and the iron rod at the top rammed his head which required six sutures. After a day’s rest he restarted campaigning by covering the head with a turban.
He won for the first time from Thiruvananthapuram by a margin of 99,998 votes.