Congress vs Congress over Shashi Tharoor and a 'masterstroke' that misfired

At the heart of the latest outburst by the Congress is Shashi Tharoor’s comment, made during the delegation's visit to Panama.

If there is one person occupying the minds of the Congress leadership, it is Thiruvanathapuram MP Shashi Tharoor. The only Congress leader hand-picked by the Modi government to lead a delegation of MPs as part of India’s diplomatic outreach on Operation Sindoor, Tharoor has kicked off quite a storm back home.

Currently leading the multi-party delegation to the United States and South America, Tharoor has come in for harsh criticism from his own party for his unflinching defence of the government over Operation Sindoor.

Top party functionaries have accused him of crossing the proverbial “Laxman rekha”. The leadership is peeved and some in Congress have termed him a “super spokesperson of the BJP”.

Congress and the art of scoring self-goals

What was designed to prevent the BJP from claiming the political high ground on the issue of nationalism is slowly devolving into a trap too familiar for the Congress to fall into. By first questioning External Affair Minister S Jaishankar and then the very composition of the parliamentary delegations, the party once again laid bare its insecurities – perhaps indicative of the brownie points it hopes to gain.

The BJP is the only stakeholder that stands to gain from the grand old party’s internal rift that is now out in the open. And there is ample past precedence for the Congress to look at.

India launched surgical strikes in 2016 days after 18 soldiers were martyred in a terror attack on an army base in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir. As the Centre gave few operational details, Sonia Gandhi said that the party “stands with the government in its actions to protect the country’s security.”

Days later, Rahul accused PM Modi of “playing politics over the blood of jawans”. Rahul’s stand drew fire from not just the BJP, but also from other parties including AAP. The impact of Rahul’s statement was also seen in the party’s poll performance in the following year in Uttar Pradesh. With a clear majority, the BJP won 312 of 403 seats. Meanwhile, Congress won 7 seats (one in every 15 seats they fought).

Now, the nation is gripped by Operation Sindoor fever. At such a time, the Congress going public in criticising Tharoor, while he is presenting India’s message on terrorism on the global stage, may do little good to the party. At best, it is likely to be seen as the Congress leadership washing its dirty linen in public.

Though a CWC member, Tharoor has increasingly been taking a line separate from that of the the party, including on other Modi government initiatives as well as some by the LDF government in Kerala. Though chances of Thaoor joining the BJP are dismal, the saffron party may gain from Congress' public spat by turning it into a poll plank for the upcoming elections.

What did Tharoor say in Panama?

At the heart of the latest outburst by the Congress is Tharoor’s comment, made during the delegation's visit to Panama.

Tharoor, who is leading one of the 7 all-party delegations for global outreach of Operation Sindoor and to expose Pakistan, stated that India crossed the LoC "for the first time" during the 2016 surgical strike after the terror attack in Uri.

“…for the first time, India breached the Line of Control between India and Pakistan to conduct a surgical strike on a terror base, a launch pad – after the Uri strike in September 2015. That was already something we had not done before. Even during the Kargil War, we had not crossed the Line of Control; in Uri, we did, and then came the attack in Pulwama in January 2019,” he said while addressing an event in Panama.

The Congress has always countered this claim by the Modi regime, saying that Indian security forces also conducted surgical strikes under the UPA government.

Heat within Congress

Party colleague Udit Raj criticised Tharoor sharply, saying he should be made a “super spokesperson of the BJP.”  Raj’s post on X (formerly Twitter) was also shared by Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh and party media head Pawan Khera.

In a post on X, Khera shared a photograph of officers from the 4 Sikh Regiment outside a captured Pakistani police station during the 1965 Battle of Burki, to remind people of earlier military successes.

"This image is from the Battle of Burki (also known as the Battle of Lahore, 1965), a significant engagement during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, fought between Indian infantry units and Pakistani armoured forces,”
Khera said.

He also reposted a report by CNBC-TV18 quoting former PM Manmohan Singh affirming similar strikes during the UPA regime. Khera also shared a2016 media report, citing S Jaishankar, who was a foreign secretary at that time, stating that India had conducted surgical strikes previously too, but the government had made it public for the first time.

Tharoor gives it back

The Congress MP responded to his party’s criticism saying, "critics and trolls” are welcome to distort his views and that he has "better things to do".

"…so I don't really have time for this ' but anyway: For those zealots fulminating about my supposed ignorance of Indian valour across the LoC in the past - 1. I was clearly and explicitly speaking only about reprisals for terrorist attacks and not about previous wars,” Tharoor said on X.

In return, Khera took a subtle jibe at Tharoor by sharing a passage from the Congress MP’s 2018 book “The Paradoxical Prime Minister”. In the book, Tharoor had criticised the BJP for what he called the “shameless exploitation” of the 2016 surgical strikes for electoral gain.

BJP backs Tharoor

The  BJP quickly jumped in to  capitalise on the internal rift within the Congress. Union Minister Kiren Rijiju questioned whether it was "forbidden to speak for the country" in the Congress. Meanwhile,  BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla alleged that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had deployed Udit Raj to attack Tharoor.

“What does the Congress party want & how much they really care for the country? Should the Indian MPs go to foreign nation and speak against India and its Prime Minister? There’s limit to political desperation!” Rijiju posted on X.

Army data backs Tharoor

Following the 2016 Uri attack, the Indian Army had publicly stated that the September 2016 operation was the first publicly acknowledged strike across the LoC.

Further, an RTI response and a 2019 statement by then Northern Army Commander Lt Gen Ranbir Singh confirmed that previous cross-border actions had occurred but under different operational classifications and without the same political messaging.

“Army does not have any data pertaining to surgical strikes if carried out before September 29, 2016," the 2018 RTI reply by then Director General of Military Operations (DGMO), was quoted as saying by News18.