Are Congress leaders distancing themselves from Shashi Tharoor?

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has once again targeted his own party by calling out Sanjay Gandhi's role in 1975 emergency, which has led to resentment against him within the party.

A senior Congress leader in AICC said, “Whatever Tharoor has been saying in his series of statements is against the party ethics, against the Congress and above all against the party’s revered political leader Rahul Gandhi. His statements have diluted our fight against the government. Congress leaders will find it difficult to accept him because of his anti-party activities.”

Going against the party line ceaselessly has also invoked a few leaders who think that the top leadership should take disciplinary action against him. The back-to-back refusal to follow party line also seems to have estranged him from the party’s official structure as well as the party’s political operations.

According to Congress leaders, it will be difficult for him to reverse his “image erosion” within the party, which started by his conscious praises for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then continuing to rebel against the Congress narrative.

Several senior leaders in the AICC, who spoke to THE WEEK, said Tharoor’s activities are anti-party activities. For all the Congress leaders are working hard to highlight the shortcomings of the government and pushing the ruling dispensation to honour its vows made to the public, Tharoor has emerged repeatedly to dismiss all the efforts, not only of the Congress but the entire opposition.

Therefore a section of Congress leaders, according to party insiders, are seen to have unofficially cut ties with Tharoor.

A party insider aware of the internal developments within the party said that Tharoor was pursuing a position at the national level after the reshuffle in the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) did not accommodate him in any role.

After Tharoor’s Modi-praising statements, which made him lose considerable rapport with the Gandhis, sources also suggest that there is a push-down on him from a few powerful leaders at the centre.

A political analyst said, “The kind of role he will get in the party in the upcoming assembly elections in Kerala will adequately show Tharoor’s future in Congress.”

A Congress insider in Kerala said that Tharoor is still a Congress Working Committee member therefore will continue to be a part of important decisions of the party.

India