By Ashraf Padanna/Thiruvananthapuram
With election results still a month away, Congress leaders in Kerala are heading for neighbouring Tamil Nadu to campaign for the party’s candidates in the next week’s parliamentary elections.
Dr Shashi Tharoor, the party’s official spokesperson who began his schooling at Montfort School in Yercaud, Tamil Nadu, held a well-attended roadshow in Chennai South on Thursday.
According to a report in the Times of India newspaper, hundreds of Congress workers, mostly women, waited to catch a glimpse of Tharoor as he hit the campaign trail for candidate S V Ramani.
According to the paper, he was received with garlands and shawls. “The message I gather from this is that the Congress is back in Chennai,” Tharoor told the crowds and explained they should vote for his good friend “who knows the local issues and is also a national leader.”
Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala left for the Tamil Nadu yesterday and Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy will reach the state tomorrow.
The party’s president in Kerala, V M Sudheeran, vice-president M M Hassan and V S Sivakumar, the state’s minister for health are some of the other leaders campaigning in the southern parts of the state.
Tamil Nadu goes to polls on April 24 in the seventh phase to elect 39 members along with 78 constituencies in 14 other states.
With allies parting ways, the Congress is going it alone in the state this time.
Elections were held in all the 20 constituencies in Kerala on April 10 along with 71 constituencies spread across 13 states.
Chandy had campaigned for Nandan Nilekani among the Malayalam-speaking voters in Bangalore last week.
A Congress communique said Chennithala was campaigning for party candidate H Vasanth Kumar in Kanyakumari constituency yesterday while Chandy will cross the border today and hold roadshows in the areas where people of Kerala origin live.
