Was 2024 Lok Sabha polls Shashi Tharoor’s last electoral stint? Congress leader says...

The four-time parliamentarian and senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday said he “does not see himself” contesting another Lok Sabha elections, if they take place five years down the line, because the Thiruvananthapuram MP believes that one needs to know when to step aside for the younger blood to come in.

In the recently concluded elections, Tharoor beat the former Union Minister and BJP leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar by 16,077 votes to register 4th win from Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat.

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In an interview with news agency PTI, Tharoor, when asked if this election was his electoral politics swansong, said, “Not electoral politics but certainly Lok Sabha. I think I have done my bit and I honestly feel that at some point, we all need to know when to step aside for younger blood to come in and have a crack at it.”

The Congress leader said he has done his very best for the constituents and will continue doing so, but believes that "there are ways of serving in public life" without having to contest for the Lok Sabha. 

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"I think if the election is five years from hence, I don't really see myself at that stage wanting to have another go at the Lok Sabha," he said.

However, Tharoor said there that are five years for him to serve as of now, and he is determined to do his best for the people he represents during that time.

When asked about the BJP winning its first seat in Kerala with actor-politician Suresh Gopi winning the Thrissur seat by a huge margin, Tharoor said it needs to be taken seriously.

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However, the MP said, Suresh Gopi is not a typical BJP candidate. "He went out of his way to declare his secular credentials, appealed overtly to the minority voters in Thrissur particularly to the Christian community, and had this personal quality of being a celebrity candidate, a well regarded movie star as well as the host of the Malayalam edition of the Kaun Banega Crorepati," Tharoor said.

“All of these make him a very unusual figure and it may not be that easily replicable elsewhere,” he added. 

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"Certainly if the BJP is going to abandon its communal message and go for the kind of secular campaign that Gopi led, perhaps they might do better but right now they have just gone from being a 13 per cent party in keral to a 16 per cent party in Kerala," Tharoor told PTI.