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Rumblings in Congress as Tharoor shares survey showing him as top CM pick
A survey shows Shashi Tharoor as the UDF's top choice for Kerala CM, causing unease among Congress leaders amid ongoing tensions within the party.
A survey projecting Shashi Tharoor as the most popular nominee for the chief minister’s post among United Democratic Front (UDF) candidates, which the Thiruvananthapuram MP himself shared on his ‘X’ account, in the forthcoming Kerala Assembly polls has spread disquiet within the state Congress camp.
The opinion survey, prepared by an agency named AT Vote Vibe and with a sample size of over 1000 random individuals, claimed Tharoor was voted the most popular leader among UDF chief minister-hopefuls with 28.3% support. While 27% said they could not pinpoint a name, leader of the opposition VD Satheesan came second with 15.4% support followed by former LoP Ramesh Chennithala with 8.2% vote. Congress general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal was the choice of just 4.2% of the respondents.
The survey comes at a time when there’s friction between Tharoor and the Congress leadership, both at the state and national levels. Last month, the CWC member publicly admitted that there were ‘differences of opinion’ with the current leadership and complained that he was not invited to campaign for the Nilambur Assembly bypoll. At the same time, he was called upon to lead a delegation of MPs to a bunch of countries including the US and Brazil. After his return from the assignment, Tharoor wrote in a newspaper article that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘energy, dynamism and willingness to engage’ was a prime asset for the country on the global stage.
When asked about the survey results projecting Tharoor as the most popular choice, LoP Satheesan told reporters, “There are scores of such surveys coming out every day.”
UDF convenor Adoor Prakash was more direct. “Everyone is doing surveys. Some people are deliberately creating such surveys to get some talking-points (before the media). There’s no need for such surveys. We will take advice from the senior leaders of the AICC on such matters,” said Prakash.
Article on Emergency sparks criticism
What muddied the waters further in terms of the relationship between Tharoor and other state Congress leaders were the strong words he used in an article he wrote on July 8 for an international portal about the excesses during the Emergency in the mid-70s.
Tharoor wrote that the broad constitutional transgressions during the period ‘enabled a horrifying litany of human-rights abuses.’ “Torture in detention and extra-judicial killings - though less publicised at the time - were dark realities for those who dared to defy the regime,” he wrote in the article in Project Syndicate.
The article was translated into Malayalam and was published by Deepika, a newspaper whose readership is mainly from the Syrian-Christian community.
LoP Satheesan said he had ‘opinions’ about Tharoor’s article, but chose to reserve them. “He is a member of the Congress working committee. No Congress leader in Kerala will make an adverse comment about him,” said Satheesan, hinting that the state leadership may complain about him to the AICC.
Former MP K Muraleedharan, who has often taken potshots at Tharoor in the past, said the Thiruvananthapuram MP must clarify which party he belongs to. “These are unnecessary controversies. We are focused on winning the elections ahead,” he said.
