The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday dredged up the issue of the alleged ties between Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and billionaire investor George Soros once again, asking the Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram to "clarify on his dealings with George Soros".
Tagging a snippet from a video interview featuring Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri, BJP spokesperson Amit Malviya asked Tharoor to answer why he approached Puri, then a minister, personally after making an accusation on social media.
In the interview, Puri says he received a personal message from Tharoor requesting him to "drop the issue" and then states he could release the "personal image" if he feels the need to do so.
The issue pertains to a December 20 tweet by Puri, then India's Ambassador to the US, claiming that Tharoor, as Union Minister of State for External Affairs, "insisted" on the inclusion of Soros in the list of invitees at a 2009 dinner in US.
"Apart from members of the diplomatic fraternity I noticed the name of Mr Soros in the list and I clearly remember bringing it up with the then Minister, who had also met him in May 2009 and even tweeted about it. That is the only time in my life when I met Mr Soros," Puri said in his tweet on December 20.
Puri further said that it became clear in retrospect that Soros was an invitee because he was among the benefactors of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and that this was the reason why Tharoor wanted to meet him.
The controversy began after an X user who identified himself as a BJP worker from Karnataka showed Tharoor an old post from 2009 in which he said: "Met old friend George Soros, upbeat about India and curious about our neighbourhood. He's far more than an investor: a concerned world citizen."
Responding to the tweet, Tharoor said he knew "Soros well" in his UN days "as an upstanding international-minded resident of New York".
"He was a friend in the social sense: i have never received or solicited a penny from him or any of his foundations for myself or any institution or cause I supported. I only met Mr Soros once more after this tweet, and that was at the home of then-Ambassador and now-BJP Minister Hardeep Singh Puri when i was visiting NY as MoS MEA. Amb Puri had invited a number of prominent Americans for a dinner discussion with me (and that was entirely appropriate). I have not been in touch with Mr Soros since, nor be with me, and my old relationship never had any political connotations," he wrote.
It was in this context that Hardeep Puri put out a statement on X claiming that it was Tharoor who insisted that Soros be included in the guest list at the 2009 dinner. In the video tweeted by the BJP spokesperson, Puri further claimed that Tharoor approached him personally asking him to put the matter to rest.
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