Less than 10 months after being appointed as the Mizoram Governor, Kummanam Rajasekharan has resigned from the post giving rise to speculation that he may be pitted against Congress leader Shashi Tharoor from Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat. Tharoor is the sitting MP from the seat.
An RSS strong man and a former chief of state unit of BJP, Rajasekharan, 65, is being seen as the saffron party's best Lok Sabha chance from Kerala, which is the only major state where it is yet to open an account.
President Ram Nath Kovind has accepted the resignation of Rajasekharan as Mizoram Governor, a Rashtrapati Bhavan spokesperson said in New Delhi on Friday.
Though the BJP leadership is yet to announce the candidate list, state party sources here said chances are high that Rajasekharan could contest from the prestigious Thiruvananthapuram seat, one of the half-a-dozen constituencies where the party hopes to put up a good showing.
Rajasekharan was made the Mizoram Governor on May 25 last in a surprise move when the crucial Chengannur Assembly bypoll was round the corner.
Since then, a section of party workers had been demanding and speculating about the return of the senior leader to active politics.
If Rajasekharan is chosen for the Thiruvananthapuram constituency, a tough triangular contest involving the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF), opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) and the BJP will be on the cards.
Though the Congress-led UDF is also yet to announce its candidate list, Tharoor is expected to seek a third term from here.
The LDF has named CPI's sitting MLA C Divakaran as its nominee. Asked for his reaction on the possible fielding of Rajasekharan from the constituency was sought, Tharoor said the BJP leader was a good human being, but it was the ideology of the party which the candidate represented mattered.
“As far as I know, he is a good human being. But it's not the individual but the ideology of the party which he represents and what kind of India that they envisage is most important. People of the constituency know very well what I have done for them in the last 10 years,” he told reporters.
Divakaran said who would be the rival candidate did not matter for him.
