Tensions between the Congress and its leader Shashi Tharoor escalated on Thursday with the party saying he was very much part of their family but had erred in claiming that surgical strikes against Pakistan were held for the first time in 2016.
Tharoor, who is heading a multi-party delegation to five countries, including Panama and the United States, had a ready riposte for the jibes by some of his party colleagues.
For 'zealots' fulminating about his supposed ignorance of Indian valour across the LoC, he was 'clearly and explicitly' speaking only about reprisals for terrorist attacks and not about previous wars, the Thiruvananthapuram MP said in a post on X from Panama City on Thursday morning.
Critics and trolls were welcome to distort his views and words as they see fit but he genuinely has 'better things to do', he said.
Trying to pacify frayed tempers, Congress general secretary Randeep Surjewala said there is no acrimony among leaders of the party.
"Shashi Tharoor is a senior Congress leader and very much part of the Congress family However, what he said about the surgical strike was factually incorrect," Surjewala told reporters.
"The Congress party only corrected the record by pointing out that the surgical strike on Pakistan and also at other places on the den of terrorists were regularly executed during Congress-led UPA government to give a befitting reply to terrorists by our armed forces and the then Congress Government," he added when questioned on the war of words between some Congress leaders and Tharoor.
Instances of surgical strikes during the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government have been detailed in the past by the All India Congress Committee Communication department and by Tharoor himself in his 2018 book The Paradoxical Prime Minister, the Congress leader said.
"Even former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh in the past spoke about these surgical strikes. Mr Jairam Ramesh and Pawan Khera have set the record straight. It should not be matter of any acrimony or doubt," Surjewala said.
Tharoor has come under stringent criticism by several Congress leaders, including media and publicity department head Pawan Khera and party leader Udit Raj, for not mentioning surgical strikes against Pakistan during the United Progressive Alliance government in his presentations abroad.
Udit Raj said he should be made a 'super spokesperson of the BJP'.
The Congress' digs continued on Thursday with Raj saying what the Kerala MP had said was a 'lie and a conspiracy to destroy the Congress'.
"The delegations which have been sent are trying to destroy the name of the Congress... Shashi Tharoor says that before PM Modi's leadership, we never crossed LoC or any international border with Pakistan. It is a big lie and a big conspiracy to destroy the history of the Congress which needs to be replied to," Raj told PTI Videos.
"He should focus on his duty rather than criticising the Congress party. Congress took required measures in the past but never publicised it or used it as a medium of collecting votes in their favour," he said.
Raj's remarks were reposted on X by Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh.
Khera also shared a screenshot from Tharoor's book in which he criticised the Modi government for allegedly exploiting the 2016 surgical strikes politically.
"I agree with that Dr Shashi Tharoor who wrote about surgical strikes in his book in 2018 - The Paradoxical Prime Minister," Khera said.
'The shameless exploitation of the 2016 'surgical strikes' along the Line of Control with Pakistan, and of a military raid in hot pursuit of rebels in Myanmar, as a party election tool--something the Congress had never done despite having authorised several such strikes earlier--marked a particularly disgraceful dilution of the principle that national security issues require both discretion and non-partisanship,' Tharoor writes in the book.
An apparently infuriated Tharoor also put out a lengthy post on X.
'After a long and successful day in Panama, I have to wind up at midnight here with departure for Bogota, Colombia in six hours, so I don't really have time for this '?but anyway: For those zealots fulminating about my supposed ignorance of Indian valour across the LoC in the past - 1. I was clearly and explicitly speaking only about reprisals for terrorist attacks and not about previous wars.'
"My remarks were preceded by a reference to the several attacks that have taken place in recent years alone, during which previous Indian responses were both restrained and constrained by our responsible respect for the LoC and the IB," Tharoor said, while responding to the criticism.