The ruling BJP appears chuffed with itself for having punched holes in the defences of the Congress during the debate on Operation Sindoor in the Lok Sabha by neutralising some of its key speakers.

While closing the debate on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it a point to underscore the exclusion of Congress MPs Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari from the list of speakers on Sindoor.

The government had appointed Tharoor and Tewari on global diplomatic missions to buttress India’s military strike on Pakistan in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack. The move had nettled the Congress leadership, which thought it should have been consulted first.

Since then, both Tharoor and Tewari have publicly foregrounded the need to put the nation before the party, much to the chagrin of their bosses.

The Congress picked neither to speak during the Sindoor debate.

Modi on Tuesday congratulated the members of the diplomatic delegations for putting “Bharat ka paksh” (India’s side) effectively and forcefully in front of the world before proceeding to take a dig at the Congress leadership.

“Those who consider themselves big leaders of the Congress are feeling pain in their stomachs as to why India’s side was presented before the world. Perhaps some leaders have been banned from speaking in the House,” Modi said.

While Tharoor was apparently offered a chance to speak, which he opted out of, Tewari did not get any such offer.

Tewari took to X and shared a media report that said: “‘Spoke in favour of govt’: Why Congress benched Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari during Operation Sindoor debate.”

He also quoted a few lines from a song from the movie Purab aur Pachhim — “Bharat ka rehne waala hoon, Bharat ki baat sunata hoon (I am from India, I speak about India).”

Tewari parried questions about his post. “There is a saying in English that if you don’t understand my silences, you will never understand my words,” he told reporters
on Tuesday.

The BJP’s strategy, particularly under the Modi-Shah duopoly, has been to portray the Congress as a national party detached from the national interest.

Ruling party managers said the Congress had handed them the opportunity to sharpen this narrative on a platter.

“Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari were not allowed to speak. Are they not efficient enough?” asked BJP MP Anurag Singh Thakur. “Did the Congress think that if their own MPs came and said that other countries had criticised the terror attack and stood with India, then it would pinch ‘Rahul-occupied Congress?’” Thakur added.

While Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Gaurav Gogoi emerged as effective speakers and scored well in terms of cornering the government, BJP leaders felt that it helped reinforce their claim of the Congress being a “one-family” party.

Rahul’s aggressive intervention in the Lok Sabha, daring Modi to call US President Donald Trump a “liar” for claiming to have brokered truce between India and Pakistan, earned applause from his party loyalists. But ministers in the government on Wednesday said it had accentuated his image as a “juvenile leader”. A BJP minister said that if Rahul had any understanding of diplomacy, he would not have dared the Prime Minister to call the US President a “liar” on the floor of the House.

“Other Opposition party leaders who were part of the diplomatic delegations spoke in the House and did well. The Congress could have achieved the same by using Tharoor and Tewari. If they could not, then it shows severe failure of their leadership,” a BJP MP said, pointing to the interventions made by the DMK’s Kanimozhi and NCP(SP) leader Supriya Sule.

Kanimozhi and Sule, who had led two diplomatic delegations overseas, thanked the government for the opportunity to represent India on the world forum before flaying the ruling side’s brand of politics.

“I thank the government for sending delegations out and giving me the opportunity to lead one delegation. I think that for the first time, the BJP had shown some confidence in the Opposition and sent us out to represent the country. I thank them,” Kanimozhi told the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

“But I would also like to say that if the opportunity to lead these delegations had not arisen, we would have been happier. Why did these delegations have to go? Because peace had failed us and you (the government) had failed the people of India,” she added.

Sule told the House that the people of the countries they visited praised India for Operation Sindoor and the restraint it had shown in not escalating the military tension with Pakistan. She also castigated the government for being obsessed with the past and Congress rule.

The BJP managers feel that Tharoor and Tewari are eloquent speakers and could have hurt the government more had they been allowedto speak.

“Our leadership exploited the strains within the Congress and picked their key leaders to represent India. Rahul Gandhi made it worse for his party by not allowing the two to speak,” a BJP general secretary said.

Since the Modi-Shah duopoly took over Delhi, the Congress has lost some of its best next-generation leaders to the BJP or its allies. Many of them, such as Jyotiraditya Sinha, Milind Deora, Jitin Prasada, R.P.N. Singh and Himanta Biswa Sarma, were seen as part of Rahul’s inner circle.

Tharoor and Tewari may not be thinking about cutting the cord with the Congress yet, but the BJP can be content with having used them to needle the Gandhi family.