Shashi Tharoor is the Shah Rukh Khan of Indian politics

While Tharoor is leading the Parliamentary delegation to the US, Brazil and Columbia and has earned huge appreciation from the government and the BJP, he is becoming a big eyesore for the Congress.

- SURENDRA KUMAR

Can you name an old national party whose workers burnt the effigy of their party's official candidate and worked hard to see him lose? Can you name a political party one of whose MPs shook the mighty British polity, academia and media with his 10-minute fiery and unsparing Oxford Union speech, in which he exposed the unspeakable injustices, wrongs, famines and economic impoverishment methodically caused by the British Raj and demanded a public apology and reparations which attracted millions of viewers and likes on YouTube and Twitter?

While his bold and heroic feat was applauded by leaders cutting across party lines including the Prime Minister of the country, his party greeted it with a stoic silence. Can you name a national party whose MP has 26 books to his credit, most of which are international bestsellers, whose weekly columns are carried by more than two dozen publications in India and abroad and whose book, "An Era of Darkness", got him the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award and whose debating and oratorial skills since his college days at St Stephen's have been the stuff which folklores are made of but it doesn't consider him good enough to retain as party's official spokesperson?

Yes, we are talking about the Indian National Congress (INC) and Shashi Tharoor, the tall, handsome, suave, urbane, well-dressed, stylish and articulate four-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram.

He embraced and mastered the social network Twitter and, for a while, had the highest followers in India until he was overtaken by Shah Rukh Khan, the Big B and PM Modi.