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Narendra Modi finds a new fan in Congress’s Shashi Tharoor

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Red-faced Congress distances itself from Shashi Tharoor's praise of Modi

NEW DELHI: Shashi Tharoor ’s effusive praise of Narendra Modi continues to rile Congressmen, with veteran Mani Shankar Aiyar declaring him a virtual defector to BJP, notwithstanding Tharoor’s clarification that he was only looking to pin the Hindutva strongman to higher standards of secularism.An angry Aiyar said, “Tharoor’s statements and clarifications have reduced the strength of Congress in the Lok Sabha from 44 to 43. We shall struggle on.” Arguing that being taken in by Modi’s promises that “belie his track record” is not expected of an alert opposition, he said Tharoor’s fulsome praise would have embarrassed “even the most ardent of BJP supporters”.The Rajya Sabha MP also noted that “notwithstanding simmering public doubts over the tragic death of his warm, gregarious wife Sunanda, he was selected again for Thiruvananthapuram.” Aiyar’s remarks came a day after Tharoor’s clarification on his comment that Modi may have evolved into ‘Modi 2.0’ owing to his “inclusive and accommodative” outreach as the PM.Under fire, Tharoor told the leadership on Friday that he was only looking to make Congress sound reasonable so that its attacks at a more justified juncture would seem genuine. Rubbishing the explanation, Aiyar wrote on a blog that Modi had been making statements about being the PM right through the election campaign and Tharoor need not have waited for the elections to end to give a positive verdict on the BJP strongman. “If Tharoor was going to be taken in by such unctuousness immediately after the campaign ended, why not while the campaign was on? Then Tharoor could have replaced Rajagopalan (the BJP candidate he defeated in Thiruvananthapuram) and emerged today as a top BJP minister,” Aiyar said.Aiyar said that the Kerala MP was sacked from the glamorous post of MoS in the foreign ministry to save the government over the IPL scandal and that he was reinstated as minister once the heat died down.Questioning Tharoor’s assessment that Modi’s focus on development over a few days as the PM implies a shift towards inclusiveness, Aiyar termed as naive any expectation that Modi “would unleash a pogrom on the morning after”.“Of course Modi will not reveal his ulterior motives on walking into 7, Racecourse Road. He will await his Godhra moment, just as Hitler needed his Reichstag moment to befool his Parliament into giving him the Enabling Act which enabled Hitler to institute his one-man rule,” said Aiyar.“How can so dyed-in-the-wool a Hindutivist so suddenly emerge as a Nehruvian secularist?” he asked, adding, “For a man as bright as Tharoor to not ask himself whether Modi has undergone a lobotomy in the week of his inauguration is bewildering. Does he seriously imagine that this mendicant pracharak, who abandoned his child-wife and lonely mother in adolescence, did it all as a lark and is no more serious about Hindutva than Tharoor is as a Congressman?”