New Delhi: Tensions between the Congress and its leader Shashi Tharoor escalated on Thursday with the party saying he was very much part of their family but had erred in claiming that surgical strikes against Pakistan were held for the first time in 2016.
Tharoor, who is heading a multi-party delegation to five countries, including Panama and the US, had a ready riposte for the jibes by some of his party colleagues.
For “zealots” fulminating about his supposed ignorance of Indian valour across the LoC, he was “clearly and explicitly” speaking only about reprisals for terrorist attacks and not about previous wars, the Thiruvananthapuram MP said in a post on X from Panama City on Thursday morning. Critics and trolls were welcome to distort his views and words as they see fit but he genuinely has “better things to do”, he said.
Trying to pacify frayed tempers, Congress general secretary Randeep Surjewala said there is no acrimony among leaders of the party.
“Shashi Tharoor is a senior Congress leader and very much part of the Congress family. However, what he said about the surgical strike was factually incorrect,” Surjewala told reporters.
“The Congress party only corrected the record by pointing out that the surgical strike on Pakistan and also at other places on the den of terrorists were regularly executed during Congress-led UPA government to give a befitting reply to terrorists by our armed forces and the then Congress Government,” he added when questioned on the war of words between some Congress leaders and Tharoor.
Instances of surgical strikes during the Congress-led UPA government have been detailed in the past by the AICC Communication department and by Tharoor himself in his 2018 book “The Paradoxical Prime Minister”, the Congress leader said.
“Even former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh in the past spoke about these surgical strikes. Mr Jairam Ramesh and Pawan Khera have set the record straight. It should not be a matter of any acrimony or doubt,” Surjewala said.
Tharoor has come under stringent criticism by several Congress leaders, including media and publicity department head Pawan Khera and party leader Udit Raj, for not mentioning surgical strikes against Pakistan during the UPA government in his presentations abroad.
Udit Raj said he should be made a “super spokesperson of the BJP”.