New Delhi: The ongoing feud between Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and the party leadership took another acrimonious turn Thursday, with the four-time Lok Sabha MP dismissing as “zealots” and “trolls” the critics of his remarks on the 2016 surgical strikes.
Tharoor did not name anyone in his post on X, but left little to the imagination as to who he was targeting. After all, it was top Congress leaders close to the party high command, such as Jairam Ramesh and Pawan Khera, who sniped at Tharoor Wednesday.
Tharoor, who is leading one of the seven multi-party delegations constituted by the Centre to visit various countries to convey India’s stand on cross-border terrorism, is currently in Panama City.
He came under attack from Ramesh and Khera, among others, over his remarks at a gathering of the Indian community in Panama City that India crossed the Line of Control to carry out surgical strikes on a terror base “for the first time” under the Narendra Modi government in 2016.
After a long and successful day in Panama, i have to wind up at midnightvhere with departure for Bogota, Colombia in six hours, 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 tge…
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) May 29, 2025
Congress leader Udit Raj even suggested that Tharoor become a spokesperson for the BJP. Raj’s statement was endorsed by both Khera and Ramesh, who had earlier this month flayed Tharoor for accepting the Centre’s invitation to lead the multi-party delegation without the concurrence of the party leadership.
“After a long and successful day in Panama, I have to wind up at midnight here with departure for Bogota, Colombia in six hours, 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.
“2. My remarks were preceded by a reference to the several attacks that have taken place in recent years alone, during which previous Indian responses were both restrained and constrained by our responsible respect for the LoC and the IB. But as usual, critics and trolls are welcome to distort my views and words as they see fit. I genuinely have better things to do. Goodnight,” Tharoor posted on X.
Tharoor was essentially responding to Khera’s posts pointing out that the Congress has always maintained that cross-border surgical strikes were carried out even during the time of the UPA government when the late Manmohan Singh was the prime minister.
Khera also cited a news report that claimed that External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, in his previous capacity as the foreign secretary, had in 2016 told a Parliamentary panel that “professionally done, target-specific, limited-calibre counter-terrorist operations have been carried out across the LoC in the past too, but this is for the first time that the government has made it public.”
Minutes after Tharoor’s X post, Khera posted a screenshot of an excerpt from “The Paradoxical Prime Minister” authored by the Thiruvananthapuram MP. In the book, Tharoor pointed out that the Congress, while in the government, had authorised many surgical strikes but desisted from exploiting them politically.
Khera posted it with the caption “I agree with that Dr Shashi Tharoor who wrote about surgical strikes in his book in 2018.”
I agree with that Dr @ShashiTharoor who wrote about surgical strikes in his book in 2018 – ‘The Paradoxical Prime Minister’. #ReadingNow pic.twitter.com/hAhsfwH0JT
— Pawan Khera 🇮🇳 (@Pawankhera) May 29, 2025
“The shameless exploitation of the 2016 ‘surgical strikes’ along the Line of Control with Pakistan, and of a military raid in hot pursuit of rebels in Myanmar, as a party election tool —something the Congress had never done despite having authorized several such strikes earlier—marked a particularly disgraceful dilution of the principle that national security issues require both discretion and non-partisanship,” Tharoor wrote in the book.
Addressing the Panama City gathering, Tharoor had said that in 2016 “for the first time, India breached the Line of Control between India and Pakistan to conduct a surgical strike on a terror base.”
“Even during the Kargil war we had not crossed the LoC, in Uri we did. Then came the attack in Pulwama…this time we crossed not only the LoC but the international border and we struck terrorist headquarters in Balakot.
“This time we have gone not only beyond the LoC and the International Border, we have struck at the Punjabi heartland of Pakistan by hitting terror bases, training centres, terror headquarters in nine places in both Punjab and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. And let me say to you that this is going to be the new normal. The PM has made it very clear that Operation Sindoor was necessary because these terrorists came and wiped the sindoor off the foreheads of 26 women,” he said.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
Also Read: Tharoor faces Congress leadership’s ire for breaking from party line on Op Sindoor, Trump’s claims
