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‘Who're they?': Shashi Tharoor slams K Muraleedharan over ‘not one of us’ remark
The fresh back and forth of scathing remarks between Shashi Tharoor and K Muraleedharan started over the former's stance on national security.
The rift within Congress, particularly its Kerala unit, continues to widen as Shashi Tharoor hit out on the party’s state unit leader K Muraleedharan on Tuesday and questioned his party position.
This comes after Muraleedharan, who has been critical of Tharoor for quite some time now, on Sunday said that the latter would not be invited to any party event in the state capital unless he changes his position about the national security issue.
He said that Tharoor was not “one of us”.
To this, Tharoor said that there must be some basis for making such remarks. Without naming Muraleedharan, he said, "First of all, it seems to me that the people saying this also have to have a basis for saying this. Who are they? What is their party's position? I would like to know."
Tharoor vs Muraleedharan
The fresh back and forth of scathing remarks between the two leaders started when Tharoor, while talking about national security on Saturday, said that politics in any democracy is unfortunately about competition and added that sometimes cross-party cooperation could be seen as disloyalty.
“Politics is… about competition. When people like me say we respect our parties… but we need to cooperate with other parties in the interest of national security…sometimes the parties feel this is disloyal. That becomes a big problem,” he had said.
“A lot of people have been very critical of me because of the stand I’ve taken supporting our armed forces and our government… But I will stand my ground because I believe this is the right thing for the country,” he added.
He also said that for him, the nation comes first and that parties were just means to make the nation better. “To my mind, the nation comes first. Parties are a means of making the nation better,” Tharoor said. “Whichever party you belong to, the objective of that party is to create a better India in its own way."
This did not sit well with Muraleedharan, who on Sunday said that Tharoor will not be invited to any party program in Kerala capital.
He added that the party’s national leadership would decide what action to take against Tharoor.
“Till he (Tharoor) changes his stance, we will not invite him to any party programme held in Thiruvananthapuram. He is not with us, so there is no question of him boycotting an event,” Muraleedharan told reporters.
Continuing his criticism of Tharoor, Muraleedharan on Monday warned him saying that the party's high command will decide whether to take action against him or allow him to stay.
Speaking to news agency ANI, Muraleedharan said, "The final authority will be the Congress high command, which will decide whether to take action against him or allow him to remain in the party. We are not ready to cooperate with him in Kerala because he always keeps attacking the Congress and Indira Gandhi."
He added that the party was not happy with Tharoor’s performance in Kerala and that he no longer comes to his parliamentary constituency Thiruvananthapuram.
"We are upset with his performance in Kerala. He is no longer coming to his parliamentary constituency...We have decided that we will not cooperate with him in the upcoming local body elections. We will follow the instructions given by the high command," he said.
