JOIN USA day after Shashi Tharoor landed in another controversy on Twitter, the opposition in his home state grew louder and sought a probe into the row and action against the Minister of State for Human Resources Development.
Tharoor, a Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, is in the middle of a controversy following alleged tweets by his wife Sunanda Pushkar that hinted at a relationship between Tharoor and Mehr Tarar, a Pakistani journalist.
The state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party called for the minister’s ouster from the Union government in the backdrop of Pushkar’s tweets that called Tarar an agent of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). V Muraleedharan, president of the party in Kerala, sought a detailed investigation into the allegations. “That the charges have come from his (Tharoor’s) own wife makes the issue more serious. Tharoor has failed to follow values expected from a Union minister. To start with, he has to be removed from the government. The probe can follow,” he said.
Tharoor’s name has again been doing the rounds for candidature from Thiruvananthapuram in this year’s general election. A joint statement by Tharoor and Pushkar may have signalled an end to the controversy for now. The latest in Tharoor’s troubles with Twitter, however, has come as a dampener for those in the Tharoor camp. An aggressive opposition in the state led by the CPM is also unlikely to let the row pass.
CPM politburo member and former home minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan took on Tharoor on Thursday and said intelligence agencies should probe into the allegations that Tharoor had connections with an ISI agent. “These allegations are being made against a Union minister by his own wife. It doesn’t make sense to look at this only as a family or personal issue.
The intelligence agencies should dig out more information on these charges,” Balakrishnan told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.