The Congress on Wednesday said it found no reason to praise Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Ramnath Goenka Lecture, and wondered how party leader Shashi Tharoor found a reason to do so, ANI reported.
“I did not find anything in the speech worth appreciating,” party leader Supriya Shrinate said.
She was answering a question about Tharoor taking a different position from the party after he described Modi’s speech as a blend of “economic outlook and a cultural call to action, urging the nation to be restless for progress”.
Modi delivered the sixth Ramnath Goenka Memorial Lecture in New Delhi on Monday.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP said he was “glad to have been in the audience” where Modi spoke of India’s “constructive impatience” for development and strongly pushed for a post-colonial mindset.
Shrinate called the speech “petty” and instead asked the prime minister to reveal what problem he has with “fair journalism,” ANI reported.
“He should tell us what his problem is with fair journalism,” she said. “He should have told us why is he not happy with those who show and speak truth.”
She further said that Modi’s criticism of the Congress during his address only goes to show that “PM thinks of Congress day and night”.
Earlier this month, the Congress had also dissociated itselffrom a social media post by Tharoor, who described Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani as a “true statesman”.
Several social media users questioned Tharoor’s praise for Advani, pointing to the BJP leader having led a campaign in the late 1980s and early 1990s to build a Ram temple in place of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.
In response, the Thiruvananthapuram MP argued that reducing Advani’s long political career to one episode, however significant, was unfair.
In July, the party had distanced itself from Tharoor’s praise for Modi’s approach to the conflict between India and Pakistan in the wake of the attack on April 22 in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam.
Tharoor, in an article for The Hindu, haddescribed Modi’s “energy, dynamism and willingness to engage” as a “prime asset” for India on the world stage, adding that the prime minister deserved more support.
In response, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge had said that while his party believed in putting India first, “some people” placed the prime minister before the country.
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