Thiruvananthapuram: Shashi Tharoor, who is in Kerala to seek support for this candidature for the Congress presidential poll, has expressed surprise at the U-turn by state Congress president K Sudhakaran and other veteran leaders in backing support for his rival Mallikarjun Kharge.

Sharing details to media, Tharoor said  that Sudhakaran's conduct is against the guidelines issues by the AICC, which prohibit leaders from publicly expressing support for any candidate. The KPCC president had earlier supported Tharoor when the MP from Thiruvananthapuram announced his candidature. But later on he, along with leader of opposition V.D Satheesan, changed tack and declared their support for Kharge.

Tharoor supporters think that the KPCC chief has switched loyalties under pressure from the party high command. KPCC sources claimed that the expression of public support for Kharge was made before the party's election management committee, headed by Madhusudan Mistry, issued the directive that no office-bearers should express public support for any candidate.

Tharoor said he had spoken to Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi as well as Priyanka Gandhi about his intention to contest and that all the three had told him to go ahead. AICC has also clarified that there is no official candidate in the contest, he added. Tharoor says he was not expecting the support of senior leaders in any case as his bid for the party chief's post is mostly backed by young leaders, who want change in the way the party is run. He pointed out that voting is confidential and therefore no one needs to worry about earning displeasure of the high command by voting for him. At the same time, the Tharoor camp is upset at the change of attitude by the senior state leaders.

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