Congress presidential election: Shashi Tharoor’s manifesto carries distorted India map
The Congress presidential election has become a headache for the party leaders following several setbacks, including its initial postponement, Rahul Gandhi's emphatic ‘NO’ that no one from his family will run for the party’s top post, political turmoil in Rajasthan, and most recently, Shashi Tharoor's manifesto.
Shashi Tharoor has sparked controversy as the manifesto shared by him shows a ‘distorted map of India’ in which he has omitted parts of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. He shared the distorted map of India, where he talked about 'decentralization of the organization.
However, he rectified the goof-up and replaced the map with the correct one in his election manifesto, but this blunder gave the BJP a chance to attack Congress.
BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya attacked on Tharoor and Rahul Gandhi’s ongoing ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ by pointed out the wrong map.
Shashi Tharoor, Congress’s presidential hopeful, puts a mutilated map of India in his manifesto. While Rahul Gandhi is supposedly on a Bharat Jodo Yatra, wannabe Congress President is hell bent on dismembering India. May be he thinks this might help find favour with the Gandhis… pic.twitter.com/SCTJI94wBz
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) September 30, 2022
Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh acted promptly and gave a befitting reply to Malviya by saying, the BJP is using "any flimsy excuse" as ammunition against party leader Rahul Gandhi's 'Unite India March'.
Shashi Tharoor, Congress’s presidential hopeful, puts a mutilated map of India in his manifesto. While Rahul Gandhi is supposedly on a Bharat Jodo Yatra, wannabe Congress President is hell bent on dismembering India. May be he thinks this might help find favour with the Gandhis… pic.twitter.com/SCTJI94wBz
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) September 30, 2022
However, Tharoor did not issue any clarification on the blunder.
This is not the first time the Lok Sabha MP has shared a distorted map of India. Earlier in 2019, Tharoor shared a 'distorted' map of India on Twitter. The northernmost territory of the country was missing from the map shared by the Congress leader.
In December 2019, he shared the cover of a booklet about the Kerala Congress's protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). He later deleted the tweet and rectified his mistake. Tharoor has issued a manifesto explaining how he intends to rejuvenate the party through decentralisation and internal reorganisation if he wins the election.
The Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram filed his nomination today at the AICC office in the national capital. Before that, he visited the Raj Ghat to pay tribute to Mahatma Gandhi.
Mallikarjun Kharge, the Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha also filed his nomination for the Congress presidential election today.
Earlier, both Digvijaya Singh and Ashok Gehlot stated that they have dropped out of the race.
Nominations for the post of Congress president closed at 3 pm today, and results will be declared on October 19.
First published: 30 September 2022, 19:08 IST