Thiruvananthapuram/Kannur: Union defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday paid a surprise visit to Congress candidate Shashi Tharoor at the Medical College Hospital where he was undergoing treatment after the balance scale fell on his head during thulabharam at Gandhari Amman temple at Pulimoodu on Monday. She had come here to address the election rally of NDA’s Attingal candidate Sobha Surendran and later a road show in the coastal areas of Thiruvananthapuram on Monday evening.
Tharoor said in a tweet; “Touched by the gesture of @nsitharaman, who dropped by today morning to visit me in the hospital, amid her hectic electioneering in Kerala. Civility is a rare virtue in Indian politics - great to see her practice it by example”!
In another tweet, Tharoor also thanked CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury and CPI candidate C. Divakaran for their phone calls enquiring about his health.
The incident happened on Monday morning when Tharoor offered thulabharam at the temple near the secretariat. Tharoor sat on the weighing scale when the doors to the deity were opened where he was offering his prayers and the rod on the scale crashed to his head.
Tharoor tweeted that he will come back with renewed vigour. Though he was keen to attend an election programme at Technopark on Tuesday evening, his doctors dissuaded him from it. By Tuesday afternoon, he was discharged from the hospital.
Tharoor later attended a massive public rally at Central Stadium at Palayam which was inaugurated by Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
‘Communism is associated with violence’
BJP leader and Union defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman has come down heavily on the CPM saying that communism was associated with uninterrupted violence.
Speaking at the NDA election convention here on Tuesday, she said the CPM had brought notoriety to Kannur through political violence. “Kannur has to bear the brunt as it is the headquarters of a party which upholds violence along with the ideology,” she said.
The people who believed in other ideologies were attacked. The communists of Kannur have killed a teacher before the students. “Only a single man was convicted in that case. Later, the CPM made him the PTA president of the same school. That indicates the CPM will go to any extent for political revenge,” she noted. “Hypocrisy is the face of communists in Kerala.”
