Congress president Sonia Gandhi is in favour of amending Section 377 of Indian Penal Code, which prohibits consensual sex between consenting adults of same gender, says Shashi Tharoor, the party’s Lok Sabha member from Thiruvananthapuram who moved a private member’s bill in the House that was defeated right at the introduction stage.In an interview to ET’s Vasudha Venugopal, Tharoor also says the National Herald case is an ideological issue for his party, proposes that the Modi government could allow the opposition set the agenda for a day in a week in Parliament and talks about why the PM needs to reveal his "Mann ki baat" on Pakistan policy. Edited excerpts:I want to stress that this is not about sexual behaviour. It is about fundamental principles of our constitution including privacy, dignity and equality before the law – articles in the constitution that have been denied to people of a particular sexual orientation. My party is firmly behind it. I have spoken to the party president (Sonia Gandhi) and she supports it too. Frankly, no one expected it to be objected to at introduction stage. We expected a challenge in the debate stage.On Friday afternoon there is barely a quorum in Parliament. The session was supposed to start at 3.30 pm. At 2:45 p.m. we got a call from the Lok Sabha secretariat saying that (BJP member) Nishikanth Dubey wanted to oppose the introduction of the bill. I made some calls but the party did have a problem – how can it issue a whip for a private member’s bill? That was an issue that needed further discussion, but there was no time to do that...I am determined to try again and I have the support of my party president on this. The Congress party’s stated position, as articulated by the president, is that we are in favour of decriminalisation. Had we had more time, we would have brought the bill.It is true only 14 bills have been passed as private member’s bills, but there is an uncounted number which have become law because the government of the day has taken them over and made them into government bills. The opposition of the BJP to my bill (to amend Section 377 ) is not as solid as it might appear. If (Arun) Jaitley, Varun Gandhi and Ram Madhav are true to their words, they will get the party to support it.The reason I proposed the amendment and not deletion is quite deliberate. My bill is about permitting consensual sex between consenting adults irrespective of the gender, logic being that the government has no place in your bedroom. My other bill was on the sedition law – the language is so appallingly vague. The law still exits but Gandhiji and Nehru both wanted it out. But it was never taken off the IPC. There is now a dramatic rise in the number of sedition cases being filed, so far mainly by state governments. This is precisely the vaguely worded law that a government can always find useful if it wants to do nasty things to people who want to dissent.The National Herald case is an ideological struggle. The fight is not about individual issues but about standing up for those values and defending them aggressively, and we have promised the party we will be more aggressive in the weeks and months to come...It is the way in which the ideological difference is manifesting itself in the government’s conduct towards the Congress party... Virbhadra Singh is raided on the night of his daughter’s wedding. That’s not the culture of our politics.There is very much a perception that the National Herald case was incited by the BJP...there is a perception in the party that there is an ongoing vendetta which seeks to bring down, hobble and cripple the Congress party by targeting as many of its leaders as possible on charges that are seemingly extraneous to their political work.It is rich of having the same people criticise the Congress for doing what they have amply justified in writing. How can you say that these guys can disrupt the UPA’s work for ten years and when the UPA does it to them, suddenly it is unfair play? Honestly, I would like to see a peaceful accommodation, a situation where the ground rules are made very clear.One practice followed in many countries is you let the opposition set the agenda one day a week. Unless you give the opposition the security of knowing that they too have rights, the tendency to go to extremes and thereby disrupt and block is justified because they have no option.They need a more systematic reach out to opposition leadership prior to issues coming up, including consultation. Also, serious consultation on how to reform the rules of Parliament in order to permit enough space to opposition so that it does not feel frustrated.Experts are saying the BJP GST bill will not add more than 0.1 per cent because the concept of UPA’s GST, which was one market and a comprehensive tax that will apply to all goods and services in rural and urban markets, has been destroyed. You’re already dividing the market into exporter states and receiving states – producer states and consumer states. You’ll again have to have checkpoints in your orders, again we’ll have queues and lorries on every frontier. Such a GST does not deserve to pass. We want a GST which is good for the nation. Their bill would essentially benefit three states – Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.Mr Modi has undoubtedly brought a certain personal energy to diplomacy, which is a good thing. But you can only be a good salesman for a credible product. You cannot sell packaging indefinitely and expect to continue to be welcomed abroad. He has travelled to many countries, he has sounded good and effective and a lot of things have impressed people, but unless he delivers at home, the next time he goes around, no one would want to hear him.My worry is complete incoherence in the government’s Pakistan policy. I would like to know what the policy is. I have conveyed to the PM thathe owes the nation a vision statement of what he thinks about Pakistan. Let him tell us what his ‘mann ki baat’ on Pakistan is. Sushma Swaraj’s statement on Pakistan is astonishingly bland and unclear on the motivation for the change of policy and vision behind why we are pursuing dialogue with Pakistan. With Vajpayee, you knew what he was saying. He said 'we can’t change our geography, we have to live with these folks, I am going to pursue peace with them.' And he did so doggedly.Similarly, with Manmohan Singh, it was an open secret that as soon as conditions were right, he was prepared to go to Pakistan. Hurriyat is a simple issue. These are Indian citizens and we are not going to deny Indian citizens the right to talk to anyone, even Pakistanis. This government has escalated the importance of Hurriyat beyond what they deserve by making them the litmus test whether we will talk to Pakistan or not.We need to see tangible results. The amount of money that we spent on bullet train to fulfil a purpose that is bizarre...I mean why do you need a train to go from Ahmedabad to Mumbai at the price of an air ticket when there are already flights. You can spend that money on so many other projects that Japanese can help us with, including improving our existing trains.In the last few years, we have had a serious mounting garbage problem in Thiruvananthapuram. I embraced this, cleaned up a beach in my constituency and then asked the PM for help. In Kerala, in Trivandrum particularly, there is canal system that was used for boating, carrying goods. Over the years, it has been completely choked. Unless you have a major programme to construct sewage lines on both sides of the canal and to have a massive progressive waste disposal, cleaning the canal is pointless because people will dump their garbage against in it. I worked with the collector and sent the PM a 250-page detailed project proposal. A year has passed and I have not even had an acknowledgement. I have even conveyed this to (urban development minister) Venkaiah Naidu but there has been no response. When PM took up the programme, I welcomed it but now I am deeply disappointed.