New Delhi: The Congress is a democratic party in which leaders express their views freely, but Shashi Tharoor has crossed the ‘lakshman rekha’ with his repeated comments on the India-Pakistan conflict, party sources said on Wednesday.
The sources made the assertion after a meeting of senior leaders, including Tharoor, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Congress general secretaries K C Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and Sachin Pilot, among others, at its 24, Akbar Road office here.
“We are a democratic party and people keep expressing their opinion, but this time, Tharoor has crossed the Lakshman Rekha,” a party source said.
While the Congress leadership did not explicitly name Tharoor, sources indicated that the message from the party’s top brass was clear – this is a time for amplifying the party’s collective stand, not for airing individual critiques. “We are a democratic party and people keep expressing their opinion, but this time, Tharoor has crossed the Lakshman rekha,” a senior party source said, emphasising that such high-stakes moments demand disciplined messaging.
The internal pushback against Tharoor follows his pointed criticism of former US President Donald Trump’s recent statement on the India-Pakistan standoff. In a May 12 post on X, Tharoor had described Trump’s comments as “disappointing for India in four important ways,” arguing that they:
