- Congress MP Shashi Tharoor criticised parliamentary disruptions and ruckus tactics
- Tharoor stated he uses intelligence to represent people, not to create chaos in parliament
- Parliament has faced disruptions over voter list revision in the ongoing Winter Session
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has schooled the opposition over disruptions in parliament, putting his differences with his party colleagues out in the open yet again. The MP who once fought to steer the party but lost to another south Indian stalwart has snubbed the need for a ruckus to get heard in parliament.
"I have said this from the very beginning. My party leaders, including Sonia Gandhi, know this very well. I may be the lone voice in the party, but I have no doubts that people have elected me to represent them in parliament, not just to shout and create a ruckus. They have sent me to use my intelligence to speak for the nation and speak for them," he said.
The Congress is expected to issue a strong rebuttal to what appears as one of their own toeing a pro-BJP line on the greatest national platform for democracy.
Read: Beginning Of The End? Shashi Tharoor Misses 2 Key Congress Meets In A Row
The parliament has been seeing disruptions over multiple issues since the Winter Session started last Monday, including over the Opposition seeking discussion on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter lists and the flight chaos. BJP blames the Opposition for the disruptions, despite the Prime Minister warning against any drama in his pre-session speech.
Tharoor has in the past courted controversy over actions that could well be interpreted as taking on his party colleagues, including with praises for the prime minister. Giving party meetings a miss one after another is believed to have widened the gap between him and the senior leaders despite frantic attempts to firefight a prolonged crisis. He later downplayed the speculations, stating that he was in Kerala with his elderly mother, which is why he couldn't attend the party meetings in Delhi.
Read: Shashi Tharoor's "Ideological Purity" Comeback To PM Speech Post Criticism
Among his latest actions that brought him under fire from his colleagues was his praise for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at the recent Ramnath Goenka Lecture. The Congress sought to know why he was even in the party if he found the BJP's strategies better.
A four-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Tharoor wields popularity across the nation, often celebrated by younger generations for his English vocabulary. He had been part of the delegations that carried New Delhi's message of peace across the world after a mega Indian offensive avenged the killing of innocent tourists in Pahalgam.
