Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Nov 16: Shashi Tharoor reportedly decided not to participate in the party’s campaign in Gujarat for the election scheduled for next month after being left off of the list of the star campaigners.
Sources claim that Shashi Tharoor declined an invitation from the Congress student organisation to campaign in Gujarat. The Gandhis’ favoured candidate Mallikarjun Kharge defeated Tharoor in the race for Congress president, but the Congress has denied excluding Tharoor.
“Tharoor was never on the star campaigners’ list earlier”, party sources said.
On the list of the top 40 campaigners for Gujarat, which will vote on December 1 and 5, are the newly elected president of the Congress, Mallikarjun Kharge, as well as his predecessors Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
Neither Gujarat nor Himachal Pradesh, which held elections on November 12, have seen any campaigning from Rahul Gandhi, who is conducting the party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra.
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Additionally, former chief ministers Digvijay Singh, Kamal Nath, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, and Ashok Chavan have joined the campaign for the Congress, along with Ramesh Chennithala of Kerala.
The Gujarat Congress will be represented by Jagdish Thakor, Sukhram Rathva, Bharatsinh Solanki, Arjun Mothvadia, and Jignesh Mevani in addition to Sachin Pilot, the party’s leader in Rajasthan. The chief ministers of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, which are both under Congress rule, Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel, are also listed.
In the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where the BJP has held power for more than 27 years, the campaign for the opposition party has so far been fruitless. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), led by Arvind Kejriwal, has waged an aggressive election campaign in an effort to displace the Congress as the BJP’s main state foe.
