LS polls: Rajeev Chandrashekhar files nomination from Thiruvananthapuram

Union Minister and BJP candidate from Thiruvananthapuram, Rajeev Chandrasekhar filed his nomination for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on Thursday.

He was accompanied by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

Earlier, Chandrasekhar also held a roadshow in Thiruvananthapuram before filing his nomination for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

The Union Minister was seated on an open-roofed vehicle and greeted the people.

A huge number of BJP supporters and party members gathered on both sides throughout the roadshow.

Before filing his nomination, the Union Minister expressed confidence that the people of Thiruvananthapuram would support him.

"It's a big step forward in serving my city Thiruvananthapuram and I look forward to people supporting me and their best wishes. The people of Thiruvananthapuram will decide and I'm confident that they want a change, and they want an MP who can deliver," Chandrashekhar said.

Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram parliamentary seat is going to be a 'three-cornered fight' with candidates of the BJP, Congress and left parties in the fray for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

BJP has fielded Rajeev Chandrashekhar while CPM-led LDF has fielded CPI leader Pannyan Raveendran, who had won the seat in 2005 and Congress has fielded its sitting MP Shashi Tharoor from the constituency.

Kerala, one of the few states where the Congress still has a strong presence, sends 20 parliamentarians to the Lok Sabha.

Senior Congress leader and ex-Union minister Shashi Tharoor has been winning the Thiruvananthapuram seat since 2009. He filed his nomination from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Kerala on Wednesday.

The BJP has never been able to win a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala. In the Assembly polls, the party won only once from Nemam in Thiruvananthapuram district, where O Rajagopal had won in 2016.

However, Chandrasekhar's plunge into the capital fray has turned it into a triangular affair, which will be one of the most watched battles in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Voting for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in the South Indian state across all 20 seats is scheduled for April 26, while the counting of votes will take place on June 4.

In the 2019 polls, the BJP's Kummanam Rajasekharan won 31.3 per cent votes, the highest among what the BJP got in the 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state.

The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) won 19 out of 20 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. While the Congress won 15 seats, its allies, the Indian Union Muslim League, won two seats, the Revolutionary Socialist Party won one, and the Kerala Congress (M) won one seat.