Mizoram Governor Kummanam Rajasekharan resigned from his post on Friday, weeks before the Lok Sabha elections. Rajasekharan was the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Kerala unit before he was appointed governor of Mizoram in May 2018.

BJP state president PS Sreedharan Pillai told The News Minute that the Kerala unit “as a whole supports him [Rajasekharan] to be the candidate of Thiruvananthapuram [constituency in the Lok Sabha election]”. Shashi Tharoor of the Congress currently represents the seat in the Lower House of Parliament.

A communique from the Rashtrapati Bhavan said the president had accepted Rajasekharan’s resignation and appointed Jagdish Mukhi, governor of Assam, to discharge the additional functions of the governor of Mizoram.

Tharoor said there was no “personal bitterness” between him and Rajasekharan, ANI reported. “I am not seeing this as a fight against an individual, rather as a fight against a party,” said Tharoor. “As far as Mr Rajasekharan is concerned, he has been kind enough to come to my son’s wedding reception, there is no personal bitterness.”