GROWING DISCORD

Shashi Tharoor’s uneasy relationship with the Congress is once again in the spotlight, and this time the tension appears to be approaching a decisive moment.

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The four-time Thiruvananthapuram MP has missed two back-to-back strategy meetings of the party's top leadership at a time when the Congress was preparing for the Winter Session of Parliament, and Kerala is only months away from its Assembly polls. His absence from Sonia Gandhi's meeting, attended by virtually every senior leader from Mallikarjun Kharge to Rahul Gandhi, has sharpened speculation about the drift between him and the leadership. While Tharoor insists that he skipped the meeting only because he was with his elderly mother in Kerala and had duly informed the high command, the pattern is difficult to ignore. Days earlier, he had also stayed away from a crucial November 18 meeting on the SIR issue, citing ill health, even though he attended a lecture by Prime Minister Narendra Modi the previous evening. His admiration for the Prime Minister’s address—one laced with criticism of the Congress—was noted by many within the party, who viewed it as yet another instance of Tharoor positioning himself at a subtle distance from the Congress line. The timing of these developments adds further complexity: if Tharoor intends to part ways with the party he has represented for more than a decade and a half, it is logical that he would do so before the Kerala elections, where political space is fluid and deeply faction-driven. His every gesture now acquires disproportionate political meaning, feeding a narrative of mistrust that the Congress leadership seems reluctant, even unable, to publicly dispel.