Excluding Tharoor's name from Congress list insult to him: Former Kerala state party chief K Sudhakaran

Thiruvananthapuram: Former KPCC chief K Sudhakaran on Thursday questioned the party's decision to exclude the name of Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor, from the list of persons to lead the Centre's delegations on 'Operation Sindoor' and said it was akin to "insulting" him.

Sudhakaran said that Tharoor was a competent leader and a loyal member of the party and therefore, in his view, it was not right to sideline the Thiruvananthapuram MP.

"All this was an unnecessary controversy is what I feel," he told a TV channel here.

Tharoor recently accepted the Centre's invite to lead a multi-party delegation abroad to put across India's stand against Pakistan on terrorism, even though he was not there in the list of names given by the party for the purpose.

He had defended his decision saying he saw no politics in the matter.

The Congress had nominated former Union Minister Anand Sharma, the party's Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha Gaurav Gogoi, Rajya Sabha MP Syed Naseer Hussain and Lok Sabha MP Raja Brar after the government asked for the names of four MPs for the delegations.

However, the government entrusted Tharoor with the task of leading one of the delegations, allegedly ignoring the Congress list.

Sudhakaran, also an MP, said that there were some rumours that Tharoor might leave the party, but they were not true.

"I spoke to him. I believe he won't leave the party," the former chief of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) said.

Regarding his removal from the top position in the party's state unit, Sudhakaran said he has some "relief" now and that he was not hurt or unhappy over it.

He said that he would always be loyal to the party and it would come first for him as the Congress has supported him a lot over the years and had given him many important responsibilities.

He also said that he will not stay away from politics and will actively work to strengthen the party.

Sudhakaran said that he would take part in the election-related work across the state and as part of that he will visit all the thousands of booth-level committees to encourage the workers to attract voters.

"I have permission for that from the new KPCC chief," he said.

Referring to the ongoing fourth anniversary celebrations of the LDF government in the state, Sudhakaran said, they are going on when major highways in Kerala were "either collapsing or getting washed away".

"Kerala CM has not responded on the matter. We need to know how many crores of rupees we have lost as a result of it," he said.

He also alleged that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his government have not done anything for the state or its people and were sitting on the money meant for the development of Kerala.