Shashi Tharoor vs Congress tussle turns murkier; Pawan Khera cites Kerala MP’s 2018 book

It seems to be a no-holds-barred fight in the Congress over party MP Shashi Tharoor’s recent remarks on India’s military strikes across the Line of Control during his visit to Panama.

 

Tharoor’s statements that India crossed the LoC for the first time in 2016 during a surgical strike on a terror base had invited wrath from a section of Congress leaders who claimed the country had done such operations in the past, too.

 

The tussle turned murkier on Thursday after senior leader Pawan Khera took to X, sharing a page of Tharoor’s 2018 book The Paradoxical Prime Minister, in which the Thiruvananthapuram MP has criticised the BJP government for their “shameless exploitation” of the 2016 surgical strikes for political gains.

 

"I agree with that Dr Shashi Tharoor who wrote about surgical strikes in his book in 2018," he said.

 

The underlined passage from Tharoor's book reads, "The shameless exploitation of the 2016 surgical strikes along the Line of Control with Pakistan, and a military raid in hot pursuit of rebels in Myanmar, as party election tool--something the Congress had never done despite having authorized several such strikes earlier--marked a particularly disgraceful dilution of the principle that national security issues require both discretion and non-partisanship."

 

Khera’s post came after Tharoor took a dig at his critics, saying he was speaking only about reprisals for terrorist attacks and not about previous wars.

 

“My remarks were preceded by a reference to the several attacks that have taken place in recent years alone, during which previous Indian responses were both restrained and constrained by our responsible respect for the LoC and the IB,” he said.

 

It all started on Wednesday when senior Congress leader Udit Raj took to X to fact-check Tharoor over his speech made in Panama on India’s Operation Sindoor.

 

Highlighting the past events of the Indian Army crossing the border when Congress was in power, Raj asked how Tharoor could be so “dishonest” to the party.

 

Later, Khera and another leader, Jairam Ramesh, stepped in to endorse Raj’s post.

 

India