Tharoor slams critics amid 'surgical strikes' remark row

Congress lawmaker Shashi Tharoor on Thursday, hit back at his critics, calling them "zealots" and "trolls" and clarified that his remark — "for the first time, India breached the Line of Control to conduct a surgical strike"— was said in the context of terror attacks and not about previous wars.

- Saubhadra Chatterji

NEW DELHI:

Tharoor was responding on X to criticism from Congress leaders about his comments that India conducted its first surgical strike in response to a terror attack in 2016.

But while a senior Congress leader sought to play down the entire episode, others doubled down on their criticism of Tharoor, even as the Bharatiya Janata Party backed the comments.

"After a long and successful day in Panama, I have to wind up at midnight here with departure for Bogota, Colombia in six hours, so I don't really have time for this — but anyway: For those zealots fulminating about my supposed ignorance of Indian valour across the LoC: in the past.