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Tide is turning against Narendra Modi government: Shashi Tharoor
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SME Times News Bureau | 04 Jun, 2018
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has suffered an "irreparable and
irreversible reputational damage" in the last four years, says Congress
leader and former foreign diplomat Shashi Tharoor.
In the state
capital to attend an event of the Indian Professional Congress -- an
outfit of the grand old party aimed at reaching out to professionals,
the two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram said a momentum was building
against the Narendra Modi government and in 2019, the general elections
results were sure to go against it.
On a warm Sunday afternoon,
as Tharoor spoke to IANS -- before the chargesheet in Sunanda Pushkar
death case was filed on Monday, he claimed the Karnataka Assembly polls
were going the Congress way.
But not attaching much importance
to Karnataka, which he said was just a "way station", the 62-year-old
Congress leader said that elections in Gujarat, where Congress inched
"astonishingly close" to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in many
constituencies, showed that the tide was now turning against the saffron
camp.
The former Union Minister, who currently is the Chairman
of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, also
pointed out how defeats of the BJP in party strongholds like Gorakhpur
and Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh recently had rendered a body blow to the
party's dream to return to power in 2019.
"What the BJP
government and Prime Minister Modi has done in the past four years in
power?" he asked, slamming them on the twin issues of Goods and Service
Tax (GST) and demonetisation.
"GST was a good idea, which
implemented in haste and in bad taste, has affected the whole tax
system," he said while pointing out how even the best global economists
had come down heavily on the GST, even calling it the most complex tax
system.
"Only the ones eating out of their hands think
otherwise," said the erudite Congress Lok Sabha member, who is knowing
for his quaint words and subtle expressions.
Sweating profusely
due to the sweltering heat and humidity, when the
diplomat-turned-politician was asked if this sweat was symbolic of the
challenging task the Congress was facing to make a comeback in the
state, Tharoor gave a big smile and ducked the question.
"Well
there are ifs and buts here and there, but with growing resentment
against the BJP-led government at the Centre and the Congress being the
biggest opposition party, we are set to be the natural beneficiaries,"
he said confidently.
On Monday, the Delhi Police filed charges
against Tharoor in the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar, naming him as
one of the accused. The charges were filed in the court of metropolitan
magistrate under Indian Penal Code sections related to cruelty against a
woman and abetment to suicide. Pushkar was found dead in a luxury hotel
room in New Delhi on January 17, 2014.
In his interview he
charged the Modi dispensation of rechristening the names of many schemes
and welfare programmes of the Congress-led UPA governments and rolling
them out as their own.
Asked to comment on whether Congress
President Rahul Gandhi when pitted against Prime Minister Modi had a
certain disadvantage, Tharoor was quick in his defense of the Gandhi
scion, saying: "India has a parliamentary system and not a presidential
one, which though has its own merits, does not fit in the Indian
context."
The Congress had its own brand of politics, while the BJP pursued the politics of one man, he said.
Asked
whether it was not the "one family" brand of politics that prevailed in
the Congress, he rebutted, saying that Rahul Gandhi, soon after his
ascendancy. had made it clear that in Congress, every worker and leader
mattered.
Coming to his favorite topic of international relations
and foreign policy, the dapper Congress leader surprisingly had a
back-handed pat for Modi.
"I must compliment the Prime Minister
for his tireless efforts, boundless energy and personal time that he has
put in the foreign policy and traveling, but sadly things have not
moved beyond this."
Sadly, he said, the foreign policy was being
treated in an "episodical manner" by the NDA government, something which
had given mistrust and a sense of insecurity in and around the
immediate neighbourhood.
Asked how the transition from the United
Nations to the hurly burly of politics in India had been when he was
fielded as a Congress candidate in Kerala in 2009 and his face lighted
up with a smile: "Initially it was pretty tough and I had very many stab
wounds in the back and front... But that kind of has stabilized now,"
he said.
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JK Singh | Thu Jun 7 09:39:14 2018
Nonsense talks. This partymen are by nature fond of worshiping the family due to their corrupt minds. Today India is what they have made over the years.
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