Tharoor lauds PM again for bringing sanitation to forefront

On Sunday, Tharoor thanked Modi and posted a video message on his Twitter handle. The message contained visuals of his cleanliness drive. “Thank you narendramodi ji. Here’s a video of my clean-up & a request to you,” he tweeted. The request was for central assistance to clean up a polluted water body — Parvathy Puthanar — in Thiruvananthapuram. Tharoor, however, said that his action has no political significance.

“To my mind there is no political significance to this event. I didn’t see it as a political activity. But rather to me it was part of a national mission. After all, it was Mahatma Gandhi who declared before Independence that sanitation was more important than Independence… The first Congress government of India led by Jawaharlal Nehru gave the nation its first rural sanitation programme.

The NDA under (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee turned it into a total sanitation programme. The UPA government under Manmohan Singh expanded and enlarged this progamme. And I am grateful to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he has continued the UPA’s good work by re-baptising it as Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan and raising it to the forefront of the national consciousness,” Tharoor said in his video message.

His Twitter bonhomie with Modi has once again raised the hackles of his partymen.

Senior Congress leader from Kerala K Muraleedharan said: “It could be because of his (Tharoor’s) political immaturity. He could have done all this before Modi’s announcement. He ceased to be a minister four five months ago. He could have led the cleanliness drive immediately after that. He could have done it when the Kerala government launched the clean Kerala mission.”