Parliament winter session: Shashi Tharoor clarifies after "attractive place to work" selfie with women MPs

Parliament winter session: Shashi Tharoor tweeted a photo with women MPs.

The winter session of parliament opened on a rather colourful (and controversial) note for Shashi Tharoor. The Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram today shared a selfie with six women MPs from inside the parliament complex.

“Who says the Lok Sabha isn’t an attractive place to work? With six of my fellow MPs this morning,” Tharoor, 65, tweeted.

Who says the Lok Sabha isn’t an attractive place to work? With six of my fellow MPs this morning: ⁦@supriya_sule⁩ ⁦@preneet_kaur⁩ ⁦@ThamizhachiTh⁩ ⁦@mimichakraborty⁩ ⁦@nusratchirps⁩ ⁦⁦@JothimaniMP⁩ pic.twitter.com/JNFRC2QIq1

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— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) November 29, 2021

The cheerful photograph features Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Preneet Kaur and Jothimani of the Congress, the DMK’s Thamizhachi Thangapandian, and Nusrat Jehan and Mimi Chakraborty of the Trinamool Congress. The selfie was clicked by Chakraborty.

Sule, Jehan and Chakraborty retweeted it.

A little over an hour after posting the photo and the tweet, Tharoor put out another tweet with a clarification. This followed a fair amount of backlash from Twitter users over him calling the Lok Sabha an “attractive place” and accompanying it with a photo with women MPs.

“The whole selfie thing was done (at the women MPs' initiative) in great good humour & it was they who asked me to tweet it in the same spirit. I am sorry some people are offended but i was happy to be roped in to this show of workplace camaraderie. That's all this is,” he wrote.

The whole selfie thing was done (at the women MPs' initiative) in great good humour & it was they who asked me to tweet it in the same spirit. I am sorry some people are offended but i was happy to be roped in to this show of workplace camaraderie. That's all this is. https://t.co/MfpcilPmSB

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— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) November 29, 2021

The winter session of parliament, which began today, will go on till December 23. The Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha passed the bill to repeal the controversial farm laws, days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced their withdrawal.

Shashi Tharoor, who has over 8 million followers on Twitter, often shares his take on topics other than politics.

As many as 78 women were elected to the Lok Sabha in the 2019 national election. This is the highest representation of women the lower house has ever seen. The number is up from what was 62 in 2014.