Congress leader and two-time Lok Sabha member of parliament, Shashi Tharoor, addressing an election convention in Thiruvananthapuram - though routine - is significant this election season. In 2014 parliamentary elections, it was the coastal belt votes that helped Mr Tharoor scrape through with a margin of around 15,000 votes even as BJP's then Lok Sabha candidate - O Rajagopal - came a close second. Two years later, however, O Rajagopal became BJP's first member of legislative assembly in Kerala when he was elected from Thiruvananthapuram's Nemom.
