Thiruvananthapuram: A survey projecting Shashi Tharoor as the most popular choice among Kerala Congress leaders for the chief minister’s post, along with a column in which he criticised excesses committed during the Emergency, has become the latest flashpoint between the party and its four-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram ahead of the 2026 Assembly polls.
In a column published Thursday in the Malayalam daily Deepika, Tharoor termed measures taken during the Emergency “cruelties beyond words”.
A shorter version of the column titled ‘Heeding the Lessons of India’s Emergency’ was published in Project Syndicate on 8 July.
“The quest for ‘discipline’ and ‘order’ often translated into unspeakable cruelty, exemplified by the forced vasectomy campaigns led by (Indira) Gandhi’s son, Sanjay, and concentrated in poorer and rural areas, where coercion and violence were used to meet arbitrary targets. Slum demolitions, carried out with ruthless efficiency in urban centers like New Delhi, rendered thousands homeless, with little to no concern for their welfare,” he wrote, adding the period of the Emergency should be looked at to draw larger lessons from it.
“We should understand the lessons of the Emergency beyond merely tagging it as a dark page in India’s history. Whether we will be able to foresee the rise of a dictator? Are we doing enough to protect civil society and institutions like the media and judiciary? Anyone who has faith in democracy should ask this,” wrote Tharoor, who has been a member of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) since August 2023.
A day after Tharoor shared the survey by a private polling agency that projected him as the popular choice for chief minister, Kerala Congress leaders asked the MP to first clarify his own political affiliation. “First, let him decide which party he belongs to,” said senior Congress leader K. Muraleedharan, adding that many leaders other than Tharoor are working for the party on the ground.
“If the UDF comes to power, one nominee from the UDF will become the CM. It’ll be someone who’s working 24 hours in the state. There are many leaders doing that grunt work in the Congress. Tharoor is a global figure; we need somebody who knows the state. Let the global leader look after world affairs, and we’ll look after the state,” he told the media in Ernakulam.
Muraleedharan also said the party is currently focused on winning elections, not picking a chief ministerial prospect.
Having been in opposition for two consecutive terms, the Congress finds itself heading into a battle for survival in Kerala.
While it won the hotly contested Nilambur assembly bypoll last month, the party’s Kerala unit is still grappling with infighting and internal discord.
Muraleedharan’s remarks came on the same day Tharoor’s article criticising the excesses of the Emergency sparked a heated debate in Kerala Congress circles. Reacting to it, Muraleedharan said party leaders believe it is important to discuss the events leading up to the declaration of the Emergency.
“Kerala was not affected by the Emergency. Congress won in states where they managed well during the Emergency, including Kerala,” he told the media in Ernakulam.
Senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala said he hadn’t read Tharoor’s article.
“I am not aware of him writing such an article. I haven’t seen it either. I don’t think there’s any situation that required him to write it. Because he is a parliamentary member of the party and a Working Committee member, it’s difficult to believe he wrote an article against Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi,” said Chennithala, a permanent CWC invitee and former Kerala Leader of Opposition. He also dismissed the survey as a BJP ploy to sow confusion among voters and within the UDF in the run-up to the polls.
“There is no trust in these surveys. It’s a cooked-up survey. We don’t need to catch on to it. It’s usual to have surveys like these during elections,” Chennithala said.
The survey conducted by the private research agency Vote Vibes and titled ‘State Vibes: Kerala Elections 2026’, indicated that 28.3 percent of respondents wanted Tharoor as UDF’s CM face in the Assembly polls, followed by Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan at 15.4 per cent.
Chennithala was chosen by 8.2 percent, while 6 percent saw Muraleedharan as their top choice. The results were published on 7 July and shared by Tharoor on his X handle Wednesday.
In the LDF camp, former state health minister K.K. Shailaja received the most support, with 24.2 percent, followed by incumbent CM Pinarayi Vijayan at 17.5 per cent.
The survey also found that 47.9 percent of respondents said there is “very high anti-incumbency” sentiment in Kerala, with women expressing slightly higher anti-incumbency (43 percent) than men (39 percent).
According to the poll conducted by the agency headed by political consultant Amitabh Tiwari, the NDA emerged as a third option, with 23.1 percent of respondents expressing trust in the alliance, compared to 38.9 percent for the Congress-led UDF and 27.8 percent for the LDF.
The agency, however, did not disclose details about the sample size or the methodology of the survey.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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