Kerala: Shashi Tharoor wins Thiruvananthapuram seat
Tharoor was in a close fight with Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar in the southern constituency.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor won Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency, data from the Election Commission showed.
Tharoor was in a close fight with Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
Tharoor has won with a margin of 16,077 votes, securing 3,58,155 of the total votes counted. Chandrasekhar was lost the seat with 3,42,078 votes.
In Thrissur, actor Suresh Gopi from the Hindutva party won the seat with a margin of 74,686 votes. The Communist Party of India leader VS Sunil Kumar and Congress veteran K Muraleedharan also contested the seats.
Kerala, which has 20 Lok Sabha seats, went to polls in the second phase on April 26.
In the run-up to polling in the state, Kerala witnessed an intense political showdown between the ruling Left Democratic Front, helmed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the Congress-led United Democratic Front. This traditional rivalry has long characterised the political landscape of the southern state.
However, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance emerged as a contender in this election. The BJP had previously not made significant inroads in the state.
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In 2019, while the United Democratic Front won 19 of the 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerala, the Left Democratic Front clinched the remaining one. The Congress-led alliance had a vote share of 47%, ahead of the Left bloc’s 36.2%. The BJP-led alliance’s 14.8% vote share had not translated into any seat.
The BJP fielded heavyweights in key constituencies including Chandrasekhar against Tharoor in Thiruvananthapuram.
While the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress are partners in the Opposition INDIA bloc, they are contesting the polls alone in Kerala. Tensions emerged between them after Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan criticised Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for contesting against the Left Democratic Front candidate Annie Raja in Wayanad.
Polling across 542 parliamentary constituencies was held across seven phases between April 19 and June 1. The Lok Sabha has 543 seats and a party or coalition needs 272 seats to form the government.
This is a developing story. It will be updated as new details are available.