Congress MP Shashi Tharoor gave a miss to a major party meeting for the second time in a row on Sunday, amid intense speculations about his differences with the party leadership over a range of issues.
Tharoor, a member of the Congress Working Committee, skipped a meeting of the party’s strategic group led by Sonia Gandhi to chalk out strategy for the winter session of parliament.
Congress is likely to raise the issue of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) which is underway in many states, US President Donald Trump’s repeated claim of brokering truce between India and Pakistan as wells as the recent car blast in Delhi.
Tharoor's office stated that he was in Kerala and was travelling back with his 90-year-old mother on a later flight.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP had recently missed a Congress meeting on SIR, citing ill health. However, questions were raised over his presence at a Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s event a day earlier.
Tharoor has been facing heat from his party colleagues over his recent statements praising Modi and targeting the Gandhi family.
Last month, he heaped praise on Modi’s Ramnath Goenka Lecture, terming it an economic outlook and a cultural call to action. In a long social media post, Tharoor said he was glad to have been in the audience despite battling a bad cold and cough.
The remarks came days after the Congress leader kicked up a row when he said that reducing veteran BJP leader L.K. Advani's long years of service to one episode, however significant, is unfair. He was reacting to criticism over his birthday greetings for Advani.
Tharoor had earlier also said dynastic politics across the political spectrum poses a "grave threat" to Indian democracy and asserted that it is high time India traded "dynasty for meritocracy".
The BJP latched on to Tharoor's remarks to target the Congress and reiterate its long-running charge that the Indian politics has become a family business.
On Saturday, while speaking at Manorama Hortus in Kochi, Tharoor said he had no intention to leave the Congress party.
“Let me say it straight, I have not even moved a finger to leave the party. Nobody has even asked me to leave the party,” he said.
Asked about his recent praise for the BJP on certain issues, Tharoor said he remains a strong opponent of the party’s Hindutva politics.
