Tharoor clarifies, but is bowled out by Oppn

The Congress leadership is likely to take a decision on his continuation in the government following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s return from his US-Brazil visit. The PM will return on Saturday evening.

Opposition parties — which did not allow Tharoor to read out his statement in Lok Sabha on Friday —  seemed to be unrelenting in seeking the sacking of the minister and in all probability will renew their demand on Monday when Parliament reconvenes.
The decision to allow Tharoor to make a personal explanation was taken at a meeting held on Friday morning at the residence of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Senior ministers Pranab Mukherjee and AK Antony also attended the meeting.
“The ball is in the Prime Minister’s court,” highly placed party sources said, adding that Singh would be having the relevant information with regards to the Kochi IPL ownership controversy to take a decision in the matter.

Sources refused to admit that the very meeting of Gandhi and Tharoor on Thursday was an indication of he being given a clean chit. “She just heard him out, gave him a patient hearing”, they said, stressing that the last word in the Tharoor saga has not been pronounced.

Ducking questions whether the party was satisfied with the explanation by Tharoor, they said that with the Income Tax authorities quizzing IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi in Mumbai and launching an inquiry into ownership of different teams, the Prime Minister would be having the facts in the case.

A senior minister who did not want to be quoted said Tharoor was a “live bomb” for the party. Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Friday: “BJP demands that the Prime Minister should — immediately after his return from his foreign trip — explain to Parliament why Shashi Tharoor is not resigning from his post.”  BJP objected to Tharoor making the statement in Lok Sabha as an MP and not as a minister and said the government should issue a statement on the matter.
The main opposition also accused Tharoor of thinking that “we are naive people who cannot see beyond...”.

Shashi flies off Twitter
New Delhi, Agencies: Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, a Twitter celebrity, has not registered his presence on the social media tool ever since he got entangled in the IPL row. With over 715,000 followers on Twitter, Tharoor had been a prolific user of the web tool, posting messages at least three to four times daily. But since Wednesday, Tharoor has gone silent on the Twitter front.
His last line was a note that he was “going live” on NDTV private news channel to give his side of the IPL controversy.

One more held over threat SMSes
PTI adds from New Delhi
Around 100 text messages were sent to politicians, including Union Minister Shashi Tharoor, from two mobile numbers procured using forged documents in the past fortnight.
Out of the 100 messages, around 40 were sent on April 13 and 14, including the ones to Tharoor, MPs Brinda Karat, Mehmood Masood Madani, Rashid Alvi, Om Prakash and Sandeep Dikshit, police sources said.
 Investigations have revealed that one of the two connections procured using the documents of a gym instructor Manick Verma was later transfered to another name using different set of identification papers.
Police detained one more person, who is identified as Yashpal.