Sonia Gandhi has never scolded a Congressman in public before i.e. in front of others at a Party meeting. She has broken that trend twice in recent times, once with Jairam Ramesh and then with Sashi Tharoor.
What did these two do to make Madam so angry? Jairam Ramesh suggested at an internal party meeting that Congress should not disrupt proceedings in Parliament as it would send a wrong message.
Sonia immediately dismissed his suggestion saying that they could not back off as a ‘political party’. And what did Sashi Tharoor do?
He made the mistake of informing the media about the views expressed by him at a meeting of the Party’s Lok Sabha members to discuss its strategy in Parliament.
Tharoor was quoted as saying that the Congress should not derail Parliamentary proceedings as these tactics would not prove effective.
Tharoor had argued that unlike the Bharatiya Janata Party, which had 110 members when it was in the opposition, the 44-member Congress would not be able to take on its numerically stronger political opponent.
He further said that the Congress could be isolated as other opposition parties may not support their demand for the resignation of BJP leaders.
Tharoor also pointed out that their protests could prove counter-productive as the government is determined to brazen out this attack. A visibly furious Sonia Gandhi pulled up Tharoor at a meeting in the presence of other party MPs.
“You always do this…it appears to have become a habit with you,” she told him while pointing to the newspaper reports in front of her.
Tharoor made a feeble attempt to defend himself, stating that this was the handiwork of his political detractors in the party. But the Congress president was unwilling to listen to him.
Earlier Sashi Tharoor upset the Congress for praising Narendra Modi as well as becoming a brand ambassador of ‘Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan’.
So, the Congressmen themselves have managed to do what the BJP has failed to do all along and that is to get Sonia Gandhi to display her anger in public.
