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‘Like always...’: Congress reacts to Shashi Tharoor's Advani-Rath Yatra defence
Pawan Khera said that Shashi Tharoor making such statements as a member of the party's working committee and an MP shows the Congress's ‘liberal spirit’.
The Congress has distanced itself from Shashi Tharoor’s defence of BJP veteran LK Advani’s Rath Yatra of the 1990s, saying that the Thiruvananthapuram MP “speaks for himself”.
Chairman of the Congress Media and Publicity department, Pawan Khera, said that Tharoor making these kinds of statements as a member of the party's working committee and an MP shows Congress's ‘liberal spirit’.
“Like always, Dr Shashi Tharoor speaks for himself, and the Indian National Congress outrightly dissociates itself from his most recent statement. That he continues to do so as a Congress MP and CWC member reflects the essential democratic and liberal spirit unique to INC,” Pawan Khera wrote on X.
Shashi Tharoor had praised former union minister and veteran BJP leader LK Advani on his 98th birthday, sharing an old photo of him with the former deputy PM.
Tharoor said the BJP leader's “unwavering commitment to public service, his modesty & decency, and his role in shaping the trajectory of modern India are indelible".
Describing Advani as “a true statesman”, Tharoor said his “life of service has been exemplary”.
Shashi Tharoor's defence of LK Advani's Rath Yatra episode
After Shashi Tharoor's praise for BJP veteran LK Advani on his 98th birthday led to questions about his ideology, the former minister responded with a caveat, using the examples of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi to support his argument.
“Reducing his (Advani's) long years of service to one episode, however significant, is also unfair,” Tharoor said on X, after a lawyer pointed apparently towards Advani's Rath Yatra, which is seen as a catalyst for the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, where a Ram Mandir now stands after the Supreme Court's ruling.
“The totality of Nehruji’s career cannot be judged by the China setback, nor Indira Gandhi’s by the Emergency alone. I believe we should extend the same courtesy to Advaniji,” Tharoor argued.
LK Advani, who scripted the BJP's rise as a formidable force in national politics, spearheaded the Ram Janmabhoomi movement by embarking on the epochal Rath Yatra in 1990. The destruction of the mosque was carried out in 1992; Advani and others have since been cleared by a court of any role.
