 "image")
Thiruvananthapuram
Largely considered as an urban constituency, Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram (latitude 8 degrees 31 minutes North and longitude 76 degrees 56 minutes East) Lok Sabha seat has voted in favour of candidates of Indian National Congress in at least 50 per cent of the Parliamentary elections since 1952. The Grand Old Party hasn't lost the seat in the last three elections thanks to ex-diplomat and noted politician Shashi Tharoor contesting from here since then.
Demographic Profile
In the Thiruvananthapuram parliament seat, approximately 129,273 SC voters constitute around 9.5 per cent of the electorate, while approximately 5,443 ST voters make up about 0.4 per cent. The Lok Sabha constituency boasts a literacy rate of 84.37 per cent.
Voters
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections 962,983 people voted in the constituency. The LS polls for Kerala were held on 26 April 2024, according to the Election Commission of India (ECI), there were approximately 13,60,772 voters in Thiruvananthapuram in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Political History
BJP has been showing a good showing on this seat for a while now, especially when compared to its performance on other seats of Kerala. The party has attained the runner-up spot in the past two polls from this seat and sees a real chance of winning this seat in the coming elections as Tharoor's winning margin was less than a lakh in 2019. The party has never ever won a LS seat in Kerala and aims to make inroads into the state by winning Thiruvananthapuram in 2024.
According to the 2011 census, Thiruvananthapuram district's population comprises Hindus at 66 per cent, Christians at 19 per cent and Muslims at 14 per cent. According to experts, the fishermen, primarily Christians, residing on the coastal localities of Thiruvananthapuram have been the backbone of Tharoor as the minority population of Kerala has traditionally voted for the Congress-led UDF.
It is worthy to mention that the Communist Party of India (CPI) has fielded Pannyan Raveendran who was an MP from Thiruvananthapuram from 2005-09. Interestingly, CPI is part of the state's ruling dispensation LDF which won all but one Assembly seat falling in the Thiruvananthapuram Parliamentary constituency in the 2021 Assembly polls. Congress managed to bag only one despite Tharoor being an MP from here since 2009.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections, Indian National Congress candidate Shashi Tharoor won the Thiruvananthapuram seat with 358,155 votes and 37.19 per cent of vote share. While trailing candidate Rajeev Chandrasekhar received 35.52 per cent of votes, making it a very close race between the Cong and BJP candidates, and the CPI candidate Pannian Ravindran managed to secure 25.72 per cent of vote share.
Here are the latest news from Business Standard