Tharoor attends meeting convened to discuss strategy for assembly polls in Kerala

Setting at rest all speculation, Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor showed up for a meeting held at the new Congress headquarters, Indira Bhavan, here on Friday.

The meeting has been convened by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to take stock of the party’s preparedness for the assembly elections slated to take place in Kerala next year.

Besides Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, party’s Kerala in-charge Deepa Dasmunshi and other senior central leaders of the party were present.

Kharge has been holding such meetings with party leaders of poll-bound states to take stock of the readiness for the elections.

On Thursday, Kharge, Rahul and other senior leaders met the PCC and CLP leaders and MPs from Assam where the assembly elections are slated for next year.

There were doubts over Tharoor’s presence at today’s meeting as he is said to be unhappy over the way he is being treated by the party.  

Tharoor has been under the spotlight recently for the wrong reasons. He praised the LDF government in Kerala for trying to attract investments into the state, lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent US visit and appeared in a photograph with Union Minister Piyush Goyal.

There is a buzz in the political circles that Tharoor’s unconventional acts have not gone down well with his party.

Tharoor has made it clear that his conscience is clear. "Not a fan of Kipling’s imperialist delusions, but there’s something about his poem that resonates with me particularly these days: 'if you can keep your head when those about you are losing theirs, and blaming it on you…', Tharoor wrote in a post on X on Friday morning.

It appears the poem ‘If’, written by Kipling, is a favourite with Tharoor. He draws strength from it in times of trouble. 

"The poem seemed to me to speak immortal truths that all individuals of conviction had to live by: the need to stand up for what you believe in even if your ideas are scorned, your motives suspected, your performance distorted; the need to persist doggedly on the right path despite the hecklers and naysayers around you; the need, above all, to have faith in yourself and not be swayed by either pressure or pleasure," wrote Tharoor about the poem in a piece penned back in 2008.

However, his presence in the meeting was a clear signal that Tharoor does not want his differences with the party to reach a point of no return.

“We held a meeting of the Kerala Congress leaders where we deliberated on our political strategy and the future of the state,” Kharge wrote on X after the meeting.

“Change is inevitable in Kerala. Congress has built the development paradigm and welfare model of Kerala, and we will do everything possible to bring our UDF to power. Next year, people will defeat both the oppressive and communal fronts in the state,” Kharge added.