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Four-time Congress parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor, whose ties with his own party has come under considerable scrutiny in recent times over his remarks eulogising Prime Minister Narendra Modi or attending the banquet ceremony of Russian President Vladimir Putin, where top Congress leaders such as Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi were not invited, has buried the speculation saying they were “moving together on the same page”.

‘Very good, constructive talks’

The Thiruvananthapuram MP, who met Kharge, the party’s national president, and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, in Parliament House on Thursday (January 29) morning for a 90-minute conversation, later told the media that they had a “very good, constructive and positive discussion”. Claiming that things were going well, the veteran leader said they were progressing together on the same page.

Also read: Are you in talks with the Left? Shashi Tharoor has this to say

Tharoor also posted about the meeting, which took place at Kharge’s chamber in the Parliament House, on X, where he thanked the party, Kharge and Rahul, and said they had a warm and constructive discussion on various subjects.

“We are all on the same page as we move forward in the service of the people of India,” he said.

The meeting took place in the wake of Tharoor also remaining absent from a number of top-level meetings of the party, including those where strategy was discussed for the upcoming state elections this year. Tharoor’s home state, Kerala, is also set to hold polls in a few months.

Also read: Why Shashi Tharoor will skip key Congress meeting on Kerala polls

One NDTV report, citing sources to say that the MP had sought time to meet the top two leaders to share his concerns and to tell them that the party would try to address them before the ensuing elections.

Tharoor’s words, acts that irked Congress

Tharoor, who once contested against Kharge for the president’s post but lost, has come under the scanner for words and acts that the principal Opposition party did not appreciate. For instance, his praise of PM Modi over his handling of the crisis in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack in April last year and accepting an invitation from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to lead a cross-party delegation overseas to inform friendly countries about the attack and India’s military response in the form of Operation Sindoor. No other leader from the Congress was given a similar offer.

On another occasion, Tharoor’s apparent praise for a speech made by PM Modi at an event was also questioned by the Congress, albeit the former said he did not utter a single word of praise.

Again, on October 31 last year, which also marks the death anniversary of former prime minister and Congress leader Indira Gandhi, Tharoor penned a piece on Project Syndicate titled ‘Indian Politics Are a Family Business’ in which he made a mention of the Congress, which is often accused of promoting dynastic politics. It had not gone down well with the Grand-Old Party either.

Also read: Tharoor’s praise for PM Modi earns Congress ire, party calls it ‘personal view’

Also at an event marking the Congress’s 140th foundation anniversary on December 28 last year, Tharoor reportedly backed a critical statement made by senior party leader Digvijaya Singh about the need to strengthen the party’s organisation. Digvijaya had even pointed to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s internal discipline, which triggered a row.

More recently, there was a buzz that Tharoor was upset with the Congress’s top leadership allegedly snubbing him at a recent event in Kochi in Kerala, where Rahul indirectly sounded the poll bugle. What fuelled the speculation that the MP was absent from two party meetings after the Kochi event. There were also rumours that Tharoor might join the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which were, however, refuted.

Also read: Shashi Tharoor refuses ‘Veer Savarkar Award’: ‘Neither aware, nor accepted’

The alleged rift between Tharoor and the party has been widening since mid-2022, when he was part of a group of party leaders that urged then party chief Sonia Gandhi to bring change in the leadership after a series of election debacles, beginning with the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

That group – called G-23 – eventually faded out. Tharoor’s reported difference has not, even though he claimed in June last year that he has been loyal to the party and its ideology for the last decade and a half.