Shashi Tharoor’s Map Blunder In Manifesto For Congress Polls, Missing Parts of Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh, Corrects After Row

Parliament Speaker polls: Shashi Tharoor with his manifesto after submission on Friday.

New Delhi:

Shashi Tharoor’s manifesto for Parliamentary elections sparked a controversy – a map of India which did not include parts of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. The ANI news agency said he issued a corrected version after social media users – especially BJP supporters on Twitter, where he has more than 8 million followers – pointed out the wrong map.

Congress sought to distance itself from the “fatal error”, trying to deflect BJP attacks on Rahul Gandhi’s ongoing ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’.

Social media users mistakenly called the map “a great stupidity” and “a shameful act”, with some accusing him of having “a divisive agenda”.

A page from Shashi Tharoor’s original manifesto misrepresents the map of India.

Parliamentary communications director Jairam Ramesh said the BJP was using “any flimsy excuse” as a target against party leader Rahul Gandhi’s ‘March of India’.

BJP was clearly panicking when Bharat Jodo Yatra had entered Karnataka. BJP’s “I Troll Cell” will look for any flimsy excuse to target and tarnish #BharatJodoYatra and @RahulGandhi. Only Dr Tharoor and his team can explain this fatal error. pic.twitter.com/3GMYj19js3

– Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) September 30, 2022

While adjustments were made, Mr Tharoor or his team did not offer any explanation.

This is the second time in three years that Shashi Tharoor, a former union minister, has fallen into a controversy over maps in a booklet. In December 2019, he shared public documents about a Kerala Parliament protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and that faced the same problem. He deleted that tweet after BJP’s IT Cell and leaders like Sambit Patra chased him. He has said that the map is not to “describe the territory but the people of India”.

In the latest row, in his manifesto booklet with the tagline ‘Think of Tomorrow, Think of Tharoor’, he used a map with a grid of dots representing the congressional units across the country. throughout India. It differs from the official map of India which includes parts of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh occupied by Pakistan and China.

In congressional polls, Shashi Tharoor is the main rival of the party’s Rajya Sabha leader, Mallikarjun Kharge, who took the lead thanks to the explicit backing of the Gandhis. Former Minister Jharkhand KN Tripathi is the third candidate for the October 17 election, the results of which will be announced two days later.

I just submitted my nomination as a candidate for the presidential election of @incindia. It is a privilege to serve the only party in India that has an open democratic process for choosing its leadership. Appreciate Soniaji’s guidance and vision.#ThinkTomorrowThinkTharoorpic.twitter.com/4HM4Xq3XIO

– Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) September 30, 2022

This is the first parliamentary election in more than 20 years that Gandhi – current interim chief minister Sonia Gandhi and her son, congressman Rahul Gandhi – did not contest. In fact, the family, to counter accusations of neo-religion, insisted on asking a non-Gandhi to take the job.