Shashi Tharoor found some support for the upcoming Congress presidential polls from the most unlikely side, when Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) expressed his support for him. Brittas took to social media on Saturday, October 8 to convey his thoughts about why he would prefer Tharoor over Mallikarjun Kharge as the next president of India’s oldest party. Brittas’s support for the Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram came at a time when several veteran congress leaders of Kerala openly voiced their support for Kharge, who was the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.
Ever since both Tharoor and Kharge filed their nominations to contest for the post of Congress president, senior Congress leaders in Kerala such as former Ministers AK Antony and Oommen Chandy and current Leader of Opposition in the state assembly, VD Satheesan, have come out in support of Kharge.
“When an MP from Kerala is contesting for the post of president, at least the party in Kerala should rally behind Tharoor right? Why are they not supporting him?” asked Brittas. He went on to add that the answer for this lay in the fact that Kharge had the support of the “most important family” (the Gandhi family) of the Congress party and therefore, the CPI(M) MP felt that it was only natural that Congress leaders in Kerala also stand with Kharge. “Therefore, it is also natural to wonder whether Kharge would turn out to be a rubber stamp of the Gandhi family,” he said.
Some of the senior Congress leaders said that Kharge had more experience and appeal among the masses as opposed to Tharoor, which was the reason why they preferred the nine-time MLA and two-time MP from Karnataka’s Gulbarga. Reacting to these statements, Brittas said, “Let me remind you that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi became Congress president because they grew up in a certain family and not because of any prior grassroots experience. Tharoor is someone who was elected to the Lok Sabha for three consecutive terms and has the mandate of the people and is also a learned man.”
Meanwhile, with just over a week left for the first presidential elections of the Congress party in over 20 years, there were rumours doing the rounds that Tharoor would back out from the race. However, the Congress MP took to Twitter to rubbish such claims. “Let me assure you that I don’t withdraw from any challenge. Never have I done that all my life and never will I. It's a friendly competition within the party, but it's a fight to the finish and I’m here to stay the course,” he said.
Congress MP from Tamil Nadu’s Sivaganga, Karti Chidambaram also offered his support to the Thiruvananthapuram MP on Saturday. “His pragmatic modernism coupled with his appeal beyond the party, is crucial to fight @bjp4india’s divisive politics. Status quo & business as usual won’t help our party. There’s an urgent need for reformist thinking in our party,(sic)” said Chidambaram.