india

Updated: Aug 27, 2019 18:03 IST

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s endorsement of Jairam Ramesh’s statement that ‘demonising the Prime Minister was wrong and he should be praised for the right things he does’, has snowballed into a showdown with the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) which on Tuesday decided to seek an explanation from Thiruvananthapuram’s Lok Sabha member for his remarks.

“He can’t praise Modi at the expense of Congress. We have sought an explanation from him. It can’t go like this. The future course of action will be decided after getting his explanation,” KPCC president Mullapally Ramachandran said in Kannur.

Other party leaders said his recent outburst that he doesn’t have to take lessons from anyone in the Congress in Kerala angered many and gave an impression he was above the party.

Also Watch | ‘PM Modi must clarify Trump’s Kashmir remark’: Shashi Tharoor

Tharoor, who is in Maldives on a private visit, is yet to react. He and another senior leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi had recently supported party colleague Jairam Ramesh’s statement.

Tharoor said that there was no harm in supporting good work and one should understand why people were backing Modi. But he later clarified that it didn’t mean that he was supporting Modi and had even claimed that there are two cases were pending against him for criticizing the PM and his party.

On Monday, opposition leader in the state assembly Ramesh Chennithala and PCC chief Mullapally Ramachandran said that Modi’s actions were unacceptable all the time and there was no need to portray him in good light. Former PCC chief K Muralidharan went a step further saying Tharoor would be better off joining the BJP while Congress MP from Thissur, T N Prathapan, wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi seeking action against him.

“It seems Tharoor is scared of case against him (case relating to the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar). Instead of seeking largesse from opponents he should fight it out in the court. He is portraying the party in bad light and it is better for him to join the BJP,” said Muralidharan, party MP from Vatakara.

Tharoor has not always been in the good books of many state party leaders, right from 2009, when as a rank outsider he was fielded by the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections and won.

In 2014, he retained the seat by 15,000 votes and in 2019 his margin went up to 99,989 votes. He had termed the 2014 vote his toughest election as his wife Sunanda Pushkar had been found dead in a posh Delhi hotel in January that year and his opponents exploited this to their hilt.

People close to Tharoor said some state leaders were whipping up a non-issue to settle scores with him. “It is really bad to question his allegiance frequently. People like him are an asset to the party. Some of them are trying to smoke him out due to sheer jealousy,” a leader close to the MP said.