‘Good Discussion, Not Looking For A New Job’: Shashi Tharoor Meets Rahul Gandhi, Says All Is Well

Last Updated:January 29, 2026, 1:43 PM IST

Shashi Tharoor met Rahul Gandhi and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge at Rahul Gandhi’s Parliament office, with discussions continuing for over half an hour.

Congress MPs Rahul Gandhi and Shashi Tharoor (File photo/PTI)

“All is well,” Shashi Tharoor said, smiling, after a brief meeting on Thursday with Rahul Gandhi in the corridors of Parliament- a sentence intended less as disclosure than as closure, following murmurs about disquiet within the Congress. The Congress MP described the conversation with the Leader of the Opposition as “very constructive and positive,” adding that both were now “on the same page,” even as he brushed aside questions about whether the party’s most articulate outlier had, at least momentarily, drifted off-script.

The meeting came after a series of public remarks by Tharoor, in which he acknowledged having concerns within the party while insisting that such disagreements were best handled internally.

Concerns, Not Defiance

Tharoor had previously said he had “issues” to raise with the Congress leadership, stressing that he had never breached the party’s stated positions in Parliament.

“There are issues which I need to take up with my own party leadership and not in a public forum,” he said at the time, adding that he hoped for “a proper conversation” once Parliament was in session.

Invoking his long tenure in the party- 17 years- Tharoor struck a note of institutional loyalty. Whatever had gone wrong, he said, could and would be addressed “in an appropriate forum.”

Part of the unease stemmed from his absence at a party meeting, which Tharoor later explained had been communicated in advance to the leadership due to travel commitments for a literature festival. He also acknowledged that while some reports about him were accurate, others were not, and declined to engage with allegations of unfair treatment at a party event in Kochi.

Praise, Perception And Party Lines

The underlying tension, however, had been building for months. It sharpened after the Pahalgam terror attack in April last year, when Tharoor publicly praised the Prime Minister’s handling of the crisis- an intervention that drew pointed rebukes from colleagues who questioned both the timing and the intent. Some openly suggested he was auditioning for a future beyond the Congress.

Those suspicions deepened when the Bharatiya Janata Party invited Tharoor to lead a cross-party delegation to brief friendly governments on the attack and India’s response- an invitation he accepted. No other Congress leader was asked to join the effort.

By November, the friction had become more visible. After attending a private event addressed by the Prime Minister, Tharoor posted on X that the speech had offered “an economic outlook and a cultural call to action.” Later that month, an article by Tharoor titled Indian Politics Are a Family Business- a critique of dynastic politics, including within the Congress- further unsettled the party leadership.

National Interest, Party Arithmetic

Throughout, Tharoor has maintained that his interventions were guided by national interest rather than partisan calculation.

In June last year, he sought to draw a clear line. “It is not a sign of my leaping to join his party,” he said of his remarks about the Prime Minister, asserting, “It is a statement of national unity.”

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