The Congress vs Shashi Tharoor saga rolled on Friday with the party's Kerala unit chief apparently refuting the MP's assertions concerning a recently conducted state assembly bypoll. Sunny Joseph, the Kerala Congress leader, asserted that Tharoor's name was included in the list of star campaigners for the Nilambur bypoll. He was answering the Thiruvananthapuram MP to the effect that he had not been invited to campaign for the party for the bypoll.
We had published the list officially and given it to the Election Commission. We had his name on the list, Shashi Tharoor's. He was out of the country most of the time, and then in Delhi. I am not aware whether he even visited Kerala. I don't have anything more to say about this," Sunny Joseph added.
He, further, listed out top leaders such as Ramesh Chennithala and Kodikunnil Suresh who participated in the bypoll campaign for their candidate Aryadan Shoukath.
Also read: Shashi Tharoor admits to differences with Cong leadership
Joseph's comments followed a day after the four-time MP of Thiruvananthapuram informed journalists that the party never invited him to join the Nilambur campaign. "I wasn't invited by the party. But that's okay," Tharoor said, adding that he had been on an official diplomatic visit outside the country during most of the time of the campaign.
He maintained that there was no hurry exhibited by the leadership even after he returned. "When I came back there was no insistence, no missed call from the leadership telling me to come," he said with a grin.
Tharoor, on Thursday, once again belittled the rumors of a break with Congress brass, while conceding "some differences". He had recently returned from a five-nation diplomatic visit by an all-party delegation, which involved meetings in the US following Operation Sindoor.
Also read: Modi-Tharoor-Tewari: Congress at ideological crossroads
Throughout the visit, his remarks praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited flak from within the Congress, particularly for not mentioning similar strikes during UPA times.
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