No Shashi Tharoor on Kerala bypoll campaign trail? His 'no missed call' response

Senior Congress leader and MP Shashi Tharoor said on Thursday he did not campaign for the Nilambur bypoll in Kerala because the party leadership never invited him to do so.

At the same time, he downplayed speculation of a rift with the Congress brass while acknowledging "some differences", coming off the back of a five-nation diplomatic outreach during which his remarks left some party leaders peeved.

“I wasn’t invited by the party. But that’s alright,” Tharoor told reporters, responding to a question about his absence from the campaign trail in Nilambur. Voting for the crucial byelection is underway there today.

“First of all, I was gone for much of the time on this official diplomatic mission. When I came back there was no insistence, no missed call from the leadership saying I should come,” he said with an enigmatic smile.

So he used the time to honour prior commitments, including chairing a committee meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs in Delhi.

“Now I’ve come to Kerala. Today is voting day and I’ve been urging everyone to vote for my party’s candidate. He is a good candidate,” he said.

Tharoor rejected suggestions that his absence signalled a rift with the party leadership or cadre. He stated that Congress workers, including those from his Thiruvananthapuram constituency, had been toiling hard on the campaign.

“My close relations with party workers have seen me through four elections in my own constituencies,” he added. “Congress party workers have been by my side everywhere.”

Tharoor, who has been with the Congress for 16 years and won four consecutive elections from Thiruvananthapuram, said there are occasional differences with the party brass, but these issues should be resolved internally. He asserted that he remained committed to the party’s values.

“Values of the institution of the Congress party are the institutional values that have kept me in the party,” he said. “Yes, there may have been differences with the party leadership on some issues. Those can be sorted out in closed-door conversations and I don’t see any reason to discuss them now.”

Tharoor recently returned from a diplomatic mission, where he led an all-party delegation to the US and four other countries to communicate India’s stance following Operation Sindoor, which was in response to the Pahalgam attack carried out by Pakistan-backed terrorists.

His appointment by the government to the delegation and some of his remarks during the tour, including praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, drew criticism from sections of the Congress. Tharoor also came under fire from party colleagues for not highlighting the surgical strikes carried out during the UPA era, while praising the Modi government's handling of the situation.