The Congress’s national leadership had removed Shashi Tharoor MP as the party spokesman on the pretext that the Kerala PCC had lodged a complaint against him over his alleged tendency to praise Prime Minister Narendra Modi “on all available occasions” but suspicions are now being aired that he was penalised as per a joint plan of the AICC and the State party.
Political observers in Kerala feel that the State Congress unit had demanded immediate action against Tharoor for praising Modi over the ‘Swachchh Bharat Abhiyan’ as per clear but discreet instructions from the national leadership and that the calls made by individual leaders of the Kerala PCC for action against him were all part of a pre-written script.
They are also not prepared to accept the theory that Tharoor was penalised for accepting Modi’s invitation to join the Clean India campaign. The action against him had more to do with the rumours that he was trying to getting close to the BJP in the context of the allegations against him in connection with the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar, they say.
Top leaders of the Congress in Kerala are now saying that Modi-praising need not have been the only factor that had necessitated action against Tharoor. A former general secretary of the Kerala PCC even went to the extent of saying, “Several things have happened since the last lok Sabha election. All of that cannot be revealed at this juncture.”
According to sources in the Congress, its national leadership as well as most leaders in Kerala have a feeling that the praises Tharoor has been showering on Modi since the electoral victory of the BJP have not been accidental. “The feeling in the party might have been that he had been trying to send a message to the BJP leadership,” said a source.
Observers are of the opinion that the national leadership, which had made him the party candidate in Thiruvananthapuram twice despite the protests of the State leaders, might have felt that the best way to deal with Tharoor was to make the demand for action against him to come from Kerala, where he did not have many friends in the party.
That Tharoor’s removal as spokesman of the Congress coincided with the renewed discussions over the cause of the mysterious death of Sunanda Pushkar might not have been accidental, it is felt. “The Congress was perhaps indirectly telling him that he, who was once considered an asset with his “world citizen” image, was becoming a liability for the party,” said a senior journalist.
“I think that the KPCC had not lodged the complaint against Tharoor on its own because someone praising Modi need not have been a big issue as far as it is concerned. Kerala’s Congress had no problem in accepting AP Abdullakutty and making him a party MlA after he was expelled from the CPI(M) for praising Modi’s development model in Gujarat,” he said.
Congress-watchers say that the leaders of the KPCC would have been only happy to make a move against Tharoor with the support of the very national leadership which had been protecting him so far despite the State leaders’ persistent complaints against him. Quite understandably, the groups in the State Congress had left their rivalry aside to attack Tharoor.
However, the Kerala BJP believes that it was the intolerance of the Congress towards anyone speaking a good word about Modi which had culminated in Tharoor’s penalisation. “The BJP is not all that eager to invite Tharoor. In fact, we are presently fighting a strong election case against him in the Kerala High Court,” said a BJP leader.