India votes: Shashi Tharoor up for reelection

Shashi Tharoorm one of the better known faces of the Congress party, will defend his Lok Sabha seat from Kerala today (Thursday).

In 2009, Tharoor won his seat from Thiruvananthapuram despite facing criticism of being an “elite outsider”. He was a senior official at the UN before that, only narrowly defeated by Ban-Ki Moon in a vote for Secretary General.

Despite his appeal, Tharoor has also consistently courted controversy – from his tweets to suspicions of his involvement in the death of his late wife Sunanda Pushkar, as well as a possible affair with Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar.
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In 2010, he was asked to resign from his post as Minister of State for External Affairs for allegations of foul play in securing the Cochin team in the lucrative IPL cricket franchise.

Tharoor has consistently supported normalised relations with Pakistan – he has written many times about issuing multiple-entry visas to Pakistanis – but he has been critical as well.

Tharoor also has emphasised that India’s rise is not a threat to Pakistan, but an opportunity instead. For his constituency from Thiruvananthapuram, he is being challenged by the Communist Party of India’s Bennet Abraham and O Rajagopal of the BJP. Despite Congress’s apparent unpopularity, his star power is likely to get him re-elected this time round.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 10^th, 2014.