‘Won’t Base My Stand On Other Contenders’: Shashi Tharoor To News18 On Lok Sabha Fight | N18VTrained to negotiate crisis as a former UN under-secretary-general and diplomat, Shashi Tharoor will be fighting Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekar — BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala — for his fourth term.In 2004, when Tharoor took the poll plunge, it was to use his stronger vocabulary carefully than being in the minefields of Bosnia. But he managed to not only defeat the then reigning champions but continued to hold on to the Lok Sabha seat despite the Left giving a tough fight to him, and infighting from the Congress where even today many consider him to be an outsider and maverick.Tharoor lost the Congress presidential election against Mallikarjun Kharge in 2022 because he was not the favourite with many of his party colleagues who also labelled him as a “traitor”. But he put up a decent fight by securing 1,072 votes. He is also not trusted by many within his party, especially those from Kerala, because of his frequent praising of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies.