Ex-KPCC chief Sudhakaran slams Congress excluding Tharoor from ‘Operation Sindoor' list, calls it an ‘insult'

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.

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