Knives out in Congress over Op Sindoor outreach, Udit Raj-Shashi Tharoor spat heats up

New Delhi: While India’s global outreach on Operation Sindoor successfully turns the world’s attention and concern towards Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, back home, this has led to ‘serious differences’ within the Congress party. Shashi Tharoor and Udit Raj, both tall leaders of the Congress party, are engaged in a bitter face-off over the former’s praise for the Modi government’s firm retaliation to Pakistan in response to April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, and insinuation that such counter-terrorism operation didn’t happen before, during the previous UPA regimes. This has left the latter irked, and he dubbed Tharoor ‘BJP’s super spokesperson’, accusing him of going against the party line. The verbal altercation attained another level on Thursday after the Thiruvananthapuram MP described the accusations against him as a ‘distorted and twisted’ attempt to push forward a certain agenda while ‘equating’ his party colleague to a ‘troll’.

Snubbing the party’s concerns over his adulation of the Modi government, Tharoor said that some zealots back home are fulminating over his ‘supposed ignorance of Indian valour’, a charge he dismissed as absurdly false. He, however, clarified, "I was clearly and explicitly speaking only about reprisals for terrorist attacks and not about previous wars.” Udit Raj, however, remained unrelenting in his attack and demanded that Tharoor must apologise for undermining the Congress party’s history of upholding the sovereignty of the nation and teaching India’s enemies a lesson, not once but on multiple occasions. “We have no objection to Tharoor engaging in ‘Modi-bhakti', but if he tries to portray the Congress party in a bad light and erase its historical contributions, he will be given a befitting reply,” said the Dalit face of the party, in a stinging response to Tharoor. A brief look at their statements shows the no-holds-barred argument between the two Congress veterans. "As usual, critics and trolls are welcome to distort my views and words as they see fit. I genuinely have better things to do,” Tharoor wrote on X this morning, while heading from Panama to Bagota (Colombia), where he will reiterate and reinforce India’s stand in the fight against cross-border terrorism. Udit Raj’s response to the raging row is equally scathing as he said, “Tharoor can’t get away by using English terminology and jargon. He must accept his mistake and express regret”. He also didn’t rule out impending action on the Congress MP, currently spearheading India’s diplomatic offensive against Pakistan in the biggest power centres of the world, including the United States. Notably, the altercation between two party veterans deepened Wednesday night, as Udit Raj’s ‘super spokesperson of BJP’ jibe was endorsed by Pawan Khera, Chairman of the Congress’ Media and Publicity Department and a member of the Congress Working Committee. Notably, there is already a growing discontent within the grand old party over Tharoor warming up to the BJP and showering praise on the Modi government, not once but on several occasions.