Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday said he went to meet the 14-year-old boy who was beaten up by the ‘BJP goons’ for leaning on a poster of Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the BJP’s candidate from Thiruvananthapuram. Calling the incident ‘shocking’, Tharoor said he invited the boy to lean on his poster without fear. Tharoor posted a photo with the boy and a poster of Shashi Tharoor. A posterof Rajeev Chandrasekhar was also spotted there as the Thiruvananthapuram fight between sitting MP Shashi Tharoor and Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar hots up.

According to reports, the boy was leaning on the wall in front of his rented house on which a poster of Rajeev Chandrasekhar was pasted. A local BJP leader saw this and allegedly assaulted him for leaning on the poster and the incident was caught on the CCTV camera.

While Thiruvananthapuram is all set to witness a tooth-and-nail fight, Tharoor slammed the CPI for fielding a candidate against him in Thiruvananthapuram and said it will only help the BJP. “In the last two elections, the BJP came second. If the CPI is really so concerned about opposition unity why are they undercutting my vote by running a candidate whose campaigning has been entirely against me? I have not heard the left speak against the BJP; they’re speaking against me all the time and trying to take away for example, minority votes,” Tharoor said. CPI has fielded Pannyan Raveendran from Thiruvananthapuram.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar said he noticed Shashi Tharoor getting desperate about the so-called ‘anti-BJP votes’ in the past few days. “He and the Left are more interested in fighting for minority votes. And so they are distorting what CAA is to scare one community of Kerala. This election can not be about the anti-BJP vote. This is about the 15 years of performance of the sitting MP which he wants us to forget. This election is also about the 10 years of Congress’s performance, 10 years of PM Modi’s performance and the 8 years of the state government. And I have presented everything with data…I found all this very amusing,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar said.