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The only thing surprising about the decision to drop Shashi Tharoor from the Council of Ministers is perhaps that it took so long to come.

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The only thing surprising about the decision to drop Shashi Tharoor from the Council of Ministers is perhaps that it took so long to come. For a person who hardly carries any political weight or experience,Tharoor had so far,almost magically,survived one controversy after another,each of which had been invited by himself in an extremely silly fashion and resulted in acute embarrassment for both the government and the Congress party.

Though an accomplished writer who also has had a reasonably good stint as a diplomat at the United Nations,Tharoor showed remarkable immaturity in his short political career which began just before the general elections last year,in which he won the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat on a Congress ticket.

It all started with a report in The Indian Express in September last year that revealed that Tharoor and his senior minister in the Ministry of External Affairs S M Krishna were staying at a five-star hotel,and not at their official residences. Both the ministers had pleaded that they were paying the hotel bills out of their own pockets and were staying there only because their official residences were not ready. Both of them were asked to shift to more humble accommodations.

While Krishna,being an astute politician that he is,kept quiet after that,Tharoor repeatedly mocked at this decision and went on to make his famous cattle class comment asked on Twitter whether he would henceforth fly cattle class in aeroplanes,he replied,Yes,in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows. That comment ridiculed the governments austerity drive,launched when the country faced a drought,and immediately made Tharoor extremely unpopular in the party and the government.

But that was just the beginning for Tharoor,whose constant updates on Twitter,even about official meetings,had started becoming extremely irksome in the government. Barely had the uproar over his cattle class comment subsided,he shot off his mouth again,this time questioning the logic in having a holiday on Gandhi Jayanti.

More followed. He publicly differed with Home Minister P Chidambarams efforts to tighten the visa regime in the wake of the David Headley affair and then was reported to have questioned the continuance of Nehruvian foreign policy in the country.

He exceeded his brief again when,travelling with the Prime Minister on a visit to Saudi Arabia,he suggested that Saudi Arabia could act as an interlocutor between India and Pakistan. India has always been against any third party involvement in its bilateral issues with Pakistan,and Tharoors statement was a clear deviation from New Delhis stated foreign policy.

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Despite his repeated indiscretions,Tharoor somehow managed to keep his ministerial berth. But he was unable to keep himself away from controversy. The latest one,which finally cost him his job,related to the raising of an Indian Premier League cricket team for Kochi.

Tharoor proudly announced that he had helped in putting together this team and would act as a mentor to it. Last week came the revelation that one of his close friends,Sunanda Pushkar rumoured to become his third wife once his divorce proceedings with his current wife is completed was given a permanent share worth about Rs 70 crore in the Kochi team.

Though no wrong doing has been established and there has been no indication of Tharoor making any monetary gains from this deal,the episode did cause a lot of embarrassment for the government.