After Tharoor, Manish Tewari agrees to be on govt outreach panel

After Shashi Tharoor, Chandigarh MP and former minister Manish Tewari on Sunday declared he would travel with the government delegation appointed to undertake global outreach on Operation Sindoor and Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.

Tharoor and Tewari, besides Salman Khurshid and Amar Singh, are among Congress leaders who feature in the final list of multi-party delegations the government finalised last night for travel across countries between May 24 and June 3. None of these four are on the official Congress nominee list for the exercise.

Tewari used a patriotic Kishore Kumar number from the 1975 film ‘Akraman’ to announce his decision to travel for the outreach to expose Pakistan on the world stage.

“A song from the movie sung by Kishore Kumar for Rajesh Khanna shows us as how to answer the call of the nation — “Dekho veer Jawaanon apne, Khoon pe yeh Ilzaam na aaye, Maa na kahe ke mere bete, Waqt pada to kaam na aaye,” Tewari posted on X in a post that implied he would travel.

Tewari's post came hours after the Congress on Sunday advised party MPs on the government list of delegations to heed their conscience and contribute to the upcoming tour.

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said all MPs, named by the government, should listen to their conscience and no further politics should be played on the matter.

The Congress list of nominees for the delegations varies from the government list. While the government named ex-ministers Khurshid, Tewari, Tharoor and Punjab MP Amar Singh, the Congress nominated Anand Sharma, Gaurav Gogoi, Syed Nasir Hussain and Raja Brar.

Of the Congress suggestions, the government last night accepted one — Anand Sharma, taking the number of Congress MPs in the official delegation from four to five.

On Sunday Jairam in another statement asked these four MPs to listen to their conscience. The Tribune has meanwhile learnt the Congress has not yet officially communicated its formal approval to four government nominees from the party to travel, and Khurshid and Amar Singh could be awaiting that.

Meanwhile, TMC has decided to skip the multi-party delegation. The party is learnt to have told the government its MP Yusuf Pathan, named on the panel, will not travel. After government nominated Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi for the delegation and she accepted to go, party leader Sanjay Raut today said, "INDIA bloc constituents should have boycotted the Union government's move to send all-party delegations to different countries."