Congress MP and former Union minister Manish Tewari on Tuesday raised eyebrows by quoting a popular song from Purab aur Pachhim as he shared on X a media report on not being picked by his party to speak during the Operation Sindoor debate in the Lok Sabha.

“Bharat ka rehne waala hoon, Bharat ki baat sunata hoon (I am from India, I speak about India),” Tewari posted on X along with a news report that said: “‘Spoke in favour of govt’: Why Congress benched Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari during Operation Sindoor debate.”

It was immediately seen as a not-so-cryptic way of indicating why he was not among the speakers for the Congress in the marathon discussion on India’s military operation.

Tewari, like Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor, was among the Congress politicians picked by the Narendra Modi government to be part of the seven all-party delegations sent abroad to mobilise opinion against Pakistan in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor. Tharoor had earlier said he would keep national interest above party politics, intensifying his friction with the leadership.

While Tharoor was apparently offered a chance to speak — which he opted out of, saying he preferred to speak on a port-related bill — Tewari did not get the offer.

Quizzed about this post by reporters, Tewari said: “There is a saying in English that if you don’t understand my silences, you will never understand my words.”

Tewari himself is a victim of terrorism. He lost his father V.N. Tewari, an MP from Punjab, to Khalistani militancy. After Operation Sindoor, he was part of the delegation that travelled to Egypt, Qatar, Ethiopia and South Africa.

The Congress leadership and leaders of other parties were upset with how the government went about organising the delegations by reaching out to individual MPs without consulting the parties.

Samajwadi Party MP Akhilesh Yadav brought up the issue during his intervention in the Sindoor discussion in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, accusing the BJP of playing politics in this, too.

The Congress did not comment on Tewari’s social media post. Party leaders had earlier obliquely commented on Tharoor’s praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s diplomatic outreach after Operation Sindoor.