The friction between Shashi Tharoor and the Congress leadership seems to have taken fresh flight.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday launched into a sarcasm-laced criticism of the Thiruvananthapuram MP for his increasing closeness to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and frequent violations of the party line, within hours of which Tharoor took to social media in a seeming assertion of his individuality.
Asked for the party’s views on Tharoor’s recent article lauding Modi’s “energy, dynamism” as a “prime asset for India on the global stage”, a day after former Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s articles that were critical of the Prime Minister, Kharge said: “I can’t read English. His (Tharoor’s) language is very good. That is why we made him a working committee member of our party… All of us, the entire Opposition, have come together and said we stand with our army…. I said the country comes first, and we will work together. 'Nation first, party later,' I said. But some people consider ‘Modi first, country later’. What can we do about that?”
On whether any action would be taken against Tharoor, the Congress president said: “What people want to write, they will write. …Why waste time on this?… Our target is to maintain the unity and integrity of the country.”
Asked if the Congress is afraid to take action against Tharoor since he is increasingly maintaining a distance with the party, Kharge shot back: “What should we be afraid of? This is our party. There are nearly 34 working committee members, 34 permanent invitees, nearly 30 special invitees…. He’s speaking at will.… Why should we dwell on it repeatedly? We are more worried about how to save the country… others may have other priorities.”
This is the first time Kharge has commented at length on the Tharoor saga, and he attempted to project the Congress as being unfazed by the controversy over the Thiruvananthapuram MP breaking out on his own without leaving the party.
Many in the party feel that the current row, which started over a month ago with him accepting the government’s invitation to head one of the seven all-party delegations overseas to mobilise opinion against Pakistan, is helping Tharoor build his profile.
Tharoor, about whose whereabouts the Congress is in the dark amid reports that he is on a second Operation Sindoor outreach mission, on Wednesday posted this cryptic message on X along with the picture of a bird: “Don’t ask permission to fly. The wings are yours. And the sky belongs to no one...”
On an overseas visit that he has been particularly quiet about, given that his social media handles normally buzz with posts on his activities, Tharoor posted the message about an hour after Kharge responded to questions about him at a media conference in New Delhi.
Barring the intriguing post, Tharoor’s posts on social media on Wednesday related to his Russia visit, where he met, among others, the country’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. In the past 24 hours, Tharoor has announced a new show for RT, a Russian state-controlled international news television network, on his book Inglorious Empire.