NEW DELHI: With the Congress grappling with exodus of its high-profile leaders ahead of Lok Sabha polls, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Monday asserted that he would stay “staunchly and entirely” with the grand old party. He said that the 10-year of BJP government has shown that the Congress is the best alternative to the people. Tharoor was speaking at ‘Delhi Dialogues’ organised by this newspaper.
When asked about suspense over Kamal Nath’s move, the Thiruvananthapuram MP said, “The party has already spoken about it. A number of friends and associates of Kamal Nath responded that it is nonsense. Same with Manish Tewari and his office has dismissed it as baseless. We should understand that speculation is your game and there is no reason for us to add fuel to it.” He, however, declined to comment on the recent exits of former Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan, Milind Deora and Baba Siddique.
Dismissing rumours about him breaking ties with the Congress and switching over to the BJP, Tharoor stressed that he took the plunge into politics not as a careerist but to advance his principles.
“Some people have been saying since 2014 that I’m about to go off to the BJP ecosystem, simply because I don’t parrot a certain line and I have a receptivity to other points of view. What they do is overlook a fundamental question of why I’m in politics at all, and be very honest, and say I didn’t need to be in politics, and had a full career and a very satisfying one when I came back to India. I could have found other ways of making myself useful and participating in the national conversation,” he said, adding that the best way to contribute to shaping a better society is through politics.
He said major parties, including the BJP and the Left, approached him to join them after he left services at the UN. Tharoor said that he chose to join the Congress in 2009 as he believed in its principles, ideas, policies and ideologies.