Congress president polls: Shashi Tharoor with his manifesto after filing his papers on Friday.
New Delhi:
Shashi Tharoor’s manifesto for the Congress chief’s election sparked a controversy — a map of India in it that does not have parts of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.Â
He issued a corrected version after social media users, particularly on Twitter where he has more than 8 million followers, pointed out the wrong map as “a massive goof-up” and “a shameful act”, with some accusing him of being divisive.
A page from Shashi Tharoor’s original manifesto that shows wrong map of India.
This was the second time in three years that Shashi Tharoor, a former union minister, landed in a map-in-a-booklet controversy. In December 2019, he shared publicity material about a Kerala Congress protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and that had a similar problem. He deleted that tweet after the BJP’s IT Cell and leaders such as Sambit Patra went after him. He’d said the map was to “depict not the territory but the people of India”.
In the latest row, in his manifesto booklet with the tagline ‘Think Tomorrow, Think Tharoor’, he used a map with a network of dots representing Congress units being across the expanse of India. It was different from India’s official map that includes parts of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh occupied by Pakistan and China.
In the Congress polls, Shashi Tharoor is the main opponent of the party’s Rajya Sabha leader, Mallikarjun Kharge, who is the frontrunner thanks to apparent backing of the Gandhis. Former Jharkhand minister KN Tripathi is the third candidate for the October 17 election, results of which will be declared two days later.
I have just submitted my nomination papers as a candidate for the presidential election of @incindia. It is a privilege to serve the only party in India with an open democratic process to choose its leader. Greatly appreciate Soniaji’s guidance&vision.#ThinkTomorrowThinkTharoorpic.twitter.com/4HM4Xq3XIO
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) September 30, 2022
This is the first Congress chief election in over 20 years in which a Gandhi — current interim chief Sonia Gandhi and her son, MP Rahul Gandhi — aren’t contesting. In fact the family, in a counter to allegations of nepotism, insisted that a non-Gandhi take up the job.
