THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: BJP chief Amit Shah hopes to wrest Thiruvananthapuram and Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha seats with the support of the NSS, though wildly ambitious.
In all likelihood, Mizoram Governor Kummanam Rajasekharan and a non-BJP Hindu independent will contest Thiruvananthapuram and Pathanamthitta respectively, as dictated by Mr Shah.
He'll covey this to lower committees when he arrives in Palakkad on Friday, as for the saffron party to retain power in New Delhi, every seat counts.
With severe factionalism, general secretary P. Muralidhar Rao had allegedly given a hard-hitting report against the style of functioning of state chief, P. S. Sreedharan Pillai.
A party insider said Mr Shah’s visit is not going to be rosy for them. But the national leadership means business and set the ambitious target of two seats.
“Thiruvananthapuram LS seat is going to witness the mother of all battles,” he told DC. “If the central leadership decides to field Mr Rajasekharan as desired by most party workers, Congress’s sitting MP Shashi Tharoor is going to see a tough battle.”
But a section of state leaders alleges that Mr Pillai is not keen on bringing him back to active politics. He had claimed earlier that he would not be contesting the LS elections.
Ever since the women entry in Sabarimala issue snowballed into a major controversy, it saw BJP and NSS sharing the same sentiments. The current equation between Mr Pillai and NSS general secretary G. Sukumaran Nair is not that good. But RSS has brokered a deal on these two seats, and Mr Pillai hopes to capitalise it.
Dr Tharoor, who won the seat for the first time with an impressive margin of 99,998 votes in 2009, had to sweat it out five years later when BJP’s O Rajagopal came close to him but short of 15,471 votes for a win.
But Mr Rajagopal was leading in four of its seven assembly segments, including Kazhakkoottam by 2,926 votes, where Mr Rajasekharan lost to Congress party’s K. Muraleedharan by 7,622 votes two years later.
