Kerala’s Congress party is likely to initiate action against flamboyant party MP Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday over his alleged pro-BJP “utterances” and for accepting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to join the Swachchh Bharat Abhiyan.
Tharoor has defended his stand by saying the controversy was unnecessary and caused by misunderstanding by people who took him as an outsider. As a first step, the Kerala PCC is expected to serve a notice on Tharoor asking him to explain his conduct in showering praises on Modi. The KPCC will hold a high-level meeting on Wednesday to consider the matter. State Congress president VM Sudheeran has openly come out against Tharoor.
The nature of the action will be decided on the basis of Tharoor’s reply to showcause notice. If necessary, the KPCC will either take action on its own or recommend the matter to the high command. However, they ruled out the possibility of any stringent action against Tharoor at this juncture. “No Congress leader should try to popularise the BJP-RSS agenda. It is improper for Congress leaders to go on praising Modi through Twitter messages and other means.
A decision will be taken tomorrow after talks with the Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and the KPCC president,” State Home Minister and former PCC chief Ramesh Chennithala said on Tuesday. Tharoor, Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, had irked the Congress in Kerala with his tweet accepting the invitation Modi had extended to him for joining the Swachchh Bharat Mission. Tharoor said in his tweet: “Honoured to accept the invitation of PM@narendramodi to join Clean India campaign… Clean India is 4 all.”
Almost all top leaders of Kerala’s Congress party buried their differences to come forward in total unison to demand action against Tharoor over his alleged pro-Modi tweets. Some leaders even went to the extent of saying that Tharoor should decide whether he wanted to stay on in the party.
Tharoor, who had earlier expressed astonishment at the suggestion that he was behaving like a pro-BJP person, tried to pacify his detractors on Tuesday by saying that he accepted Modi’s invitation because he did not want to let the BJP claim the ownership of a great programme (Clean India), which was a dream of Mahatma Gandhi.
“There is no reason to question my belief in and loyalty to the Congress party. I will always uphold the values of the Congress. I decided to accept the PM’s invitation because as a Congressman, I did not want to be seen as staying away from fulfilling a dream of Gandhiji on his birthday,” Tharoor said, adding that the controversy was a result of misunderstanding.
Tharoor told TV channel that he is “seen as a foreign object in the body politic” and his critics in the Kerala branch of his party have neither understood his remarks, nor bothered to talk to him.
At the same time, a section in Kerala’s Congress seemed to be taking a soft line towards Tharoor. While Chief Minister Chandy limited his comments on the issue to “The KPCC president has spoken about it”, his staunch loyalist and State Congress general secretary T Siddique endorsed Tharoor’s stand on the Modi Government’s Swachchh Bharat Abhiyan.
“Swachchh Bharat Abhiyan is not an original programme of Narendra Modi. It is an old Congress programme in a new name. In that sense, it is every Congressman’s to ensure that Modi does not succeed in making it his programme. Therefore, the decision taken by Shashi Tharoor MP is absolutely correct. Congressmen should understand this,” Siddique said in his Facebook post.
Meanwhile, the Tuesday edition of the Congress mouthpiece, Veekshanam daily, launched a scathing attack against Tharoor describing him as a politician who was being tempted by the “power and prospects seen on the other side”. Without mentioning Tharoor by name, the paper’s editorial asked him to quit the Congress instead of praising Modi while staying in it.