Thiruvananthapuram, March 24 Congress' Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor extended his congratulations to former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar who was unanimously elected as the new President of the BJP's Kerala unit on Monday.
"Congratulations and best wishes to the newly elected Kerala State President of the BJP, @RajeevRC_X. Looking forward to crossing swords again!" Tharoor posted on his X handle.
Incidentally, the two had locked horns in a fierce political battle when Chandrasekhar was a surprise choice to stop sitting three-time Lok Sabha member Tharoor from winning a fourth straight time in the 2024 Parliamentary elections.
Political pundits and others predicted an easy walkover for Tharoor, who had won the 2019 polls and completed a hat trick of wins with a margin of around 99,000 votes, as Chandrasekhar was then touted as an "import", though being a Keralite.
Chandrasekhar was Bengaluru-settled and the only connection that he had with Kerala was his popular father-in-law Nambiar who was behind the then hugely popular electronic company BPL.
But with the campaign picking up and Chandrasekhar catching up hugely, the Tharoor camp became nervous. However, when votes was counted, Tharoor managed to scrape through with a margin of around 16,000 votes - a large fall over his 2019 win.
There were times when Tharoor was trailing but things turned around for him when votes from the coastal areas were counted, enabling him to race past Chandrasekhar and clinch the content.
After putting up a real fight, many felt that Chandrasekhar would return to contest from one of the Assembly constituencies in the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency, where he edged out Tharoor in the next Assembly elections, but not many expected that he would return this quickly and that too by becoming the President of the state unit, as he has hardly any experience of working with the party cadres at the grassroots which is an essential ingredient aspect to invigorate the average BJP worker.
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