Thriruvananthapuram 16-07-2011: “I just could not spend all the money that I received for my first election campaign,” said CM.  He shared some of the experiences of his maiden electoral battle at the function to release the book ‘Mattering to India: The Shashi Tharoor Campaign’ by T.P Sreenivasan, the former Indian Ambassador. The book is all about Dr Tharoor’s first election campaign when he contested to Lok Sabha from Trivandrum in 2009.

“I was a student when the party made me a candidate for the Assembly elections for the first time in 1970. It was very hard to collect the fund for the election campaign. Therefore the party gave me Rs 25,000. I also got a donation of Rs 1200,” said CM

“Even after spending quite a lot on campaigning, including arranging a car for each ward which was then permitted, I still had a substantial balance amount which I wanted to return to the party. But K.K. Viswanathan who was the KPCC president refused to take back the money,” he said.

 “So I decided to catch a flight to Patna to attend the AICC session. That was the second flight of my life”, said Oommen Chandy.

The book was released by Oommen Chandy by presenting a copy of the same to Central Minister Vayalar Ravi. When Tharoor expressed his wish to contest in election, it was Palakkad LokSabha constituency that I suggested but as per Tharoor’s wish he was given the chance to contest from Trivandrum, said Vayalar Ravi.

Tharoor said that though he had written many books and has been mentioned in many, it was for the first time that he is being made the subject of any book.

Many incidents like Tharoor’s marriage and IPL controversy are also mentioned in the book thought the core subject of the book is Tharoor’s election campaign to Lok Sabha.