BJP'S TASK FOR THAROOR EXPOSES CONGRESS RIFT

Indian Opposition party's snub of one of its popular leaders shows how far it has drifted from political pragmatism

- BY SWATI CHATURVEDI | Special to Gulf News

"Anyone who considers serving the national interest as anti-party activity should have his head examined," said a source close to Shashi Tharoor — four-time Congress Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, and these days considered a Congress rebel without pause.

What got overshadowed in the Congress party's latest kerfuffle was the Indian government's foreign outreach that cut across party lines following Operation Sindoor. The Modi government picked seven MPs — four from the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and three from the opposition, including Tharoor — to articulate India's stance against terrorism to the world.

The Congress, India's oldest political party, threw a hissy fit when the Modi government ignored its own list of recommended names and instead picked Tharoor — a name the party had not included — to head one of the delegations.

You really have to wonder at the political smarts of a party that publicly snubs Tharoor, who heads the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs and was a key minister in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government. A former professional diplomat, Tharoor was previously the under-secretary-general of the United Nations and spent more than three decades in the rarefied world of high diplomacy. If there's anyone in the Congress more qualified to represent India on the global stage, it's a mystery to those outside the party's palace coterie.

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