The Congress on Monday removed its senior leader and former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor as party spokesperson for his praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachchh Bharat campaign launched early this month.
Party general secretary Janardan Dwivedi said that Congress president Sonia Gandhi has accepted the recommendation of the AICC disciplinary committee to remove Tharoor from the list of party spokespersons with immediate effect. He said that Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) had submitted a complaint in this regard to the disciplinary committee of the party. The committee, comprising Motilal Vora, AK Antony and Sushilkumar Shinde, had “examined” the complaint of the Kerala Congress and took a decision against him.
Tharoor accepted the party’s decision and said he would have welcomed the opportunity to respond to allegations levelled against him. Tharoor posted his statement on Twitter and Facebook saying it is the “prerogative” of the party to “alter” the responsibilities given to him.
“I am in politics to serve the people of India and my constituency, Thiruvananthapuram, through my service to the Congress. This I have always done with utmost sincerity and commitment and I will continue to do so. Whatever responsibilities the party has entrusted to me I have fulfilled without reservation, and I fully recognise it is the prerogative of the party to alter these responsibilities,” Tharoor said.
Welcoming the action against Tharoor, KPCC president VM Sudheeran said it was an “appropriate decision”. The report of the KPCC had held that Tharoor’s adulatory statements about Modi had hurt Congress workers in Kerala.
Taking a swipe at the Congress for acting against Tharoor for praising Modi, the BJP said it reflects “intolerance” as the party cannot digest somebody doing good work. Party spokesperson Siddharth Nath Singh said, “It is their internal matter. But certainly, it shows the level of tolerance or intolerance in the Congress.”
Singh noted that Tharoor had been selected by Modi as one of the nine prominent people for pushing the “apolitical” Swachchh Bharat campaign which was an unfulfilled dream of Mahatma Gandhi. The action against Tharoor shows that Congress will “sack even those who do good work. There is no regard for good work in Congress,” he said.
Tharoor has not been briefing media at the AICC since June 4 ever since his article in the Huffington Post praised Modi saying it would be “churlish” if his party did not take note of Modi’s efforts to sound gracious and accommodative and reinvent himself from a “hate figure into an avatar of modernity and progress”.