‘Critics and trolls are welcome’: Shashi Tharoor amid Congress’s ‘super spokesperson’ jibe

Taking to X, Tharoor wrote: “After a long and successful day in Panama, I have to wind up at midnight here with departure for Bogota, Colombia in six hours, so I don’t really have time for this — but anyway: For those zealots fulminating about my supposed ignorance of Indian valour across the LoC: in the past. 1. I was clearly and explicitly speaking only about reprisals for terrorist attacks and not about previous wars; & 2. My remarks were preceded by a reference to the several attacks that have taken place in recent years alone, during which previous Indian responses were both restrained and constrained by our responsible respect for the LoC and the IB.”

He said that given all these explanations, “the critics and trolls are welcome to distort my views and words as they see fit. I genuinely have better things to do. Goodnight”.

Tharoor has been in the receiving end from his own party after he praised India’s response to terrorism in the past few years. “Our Prime Minister made it clear, Operation Sindoor was necessary because terrorists came and wiped the ‘sindoor’ off the foreheads of 26 women…but India decided that the vermillion colour of the ‘sindoor’ will also match the colour of the blood of the killers, the perpetrators of the attack,” Tharoor said while speaking during a global outreach programme.

On Wednesday, the Congress MP also said that the first time India breached the Line of Control to attack a terror base in Pakistan was during the Uri surgical strikes. The Indian Army went one step beyond the LoC during Operation Sindoor, hitting terror bases, training centres, terror headquarters in nine locations.

The remarks drew considerable flak from his own party leader Udit Raj, who accused Tharoor of being “dishonest” with his own party. Posting on X, Raj said, “I could prevail upon PM Modi to declare you as super spokesperson of BJP, even declaring as foreign minister before landing in India . How could you denigrate the golden history of Congress by saying that before PM Modi , India never crossed LOC and International border.”

BJP leader Kiren Rijiju however came out in Tharoor’s support, hitting out at the Grand Old Party. Rijiju questioned why Indian MPs should speak against the country or the Prime Minister on foreign soil. “What does the Congress party want & How much they really care for the country? Should the Indian MPs go to foreign nation and speak against India and its Prime Minister? There’s limit to political desperation,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

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