Indian National Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, 66-year-old, has apologised “unconditionally” for misrepresenting India’s geographical boundaries in his manifesto for the Congress President’s election.
In a tweet, Tharoor blamed his small volunteer team for this “mistake”. He added: “No one does such things on purpose … We rectified it immediately and I apologise unconditionally.”
Tharoor’s manifesto entitled ‘Think Tomorrow, Think Tharoor’ used a map of India that did not have parts of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
After social media users attacked him over the wrong map and also typo on the last page, Tharoor shared the corrected version.
However, some in the Congress party tried to distance themselves from the “egregious error” and even deflected the blame to BJP arguing this was used as an excuse to attack Rahul Gandhi’s ongoing ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh tweeted: “The BJP is clearly panicking now that the Bharat Jodo Yatra has entered Karnataka.”
This is not the first time that Tharoor has landed in a map controversy. In December 2019, he shared publicity material about a Kerala Congress protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) with a similar map of India.
Tharoor is part of the group of 23 leaders who wrote to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 seeking large-scale reforms within the party. He is fighting against Mallikarjun Kharge and K. N. Tripathi in the Congress President election to be held on 17 October 2022.
