Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who has been posting some ludicrous tweets of late, today quoted a tweet of a Twitter user who had run a poll on who would win the elections if they were to be conducted today. The poll result showed that 53 per cent of the respondents preferred Congress over the BJP.
Tharoor quoted the tweet and asserted that the poll, which was responded by a paltry 7,764 voters of the 17.3 million Twitter India users was a more accurate representative sample than the 12,151 out of the 1.2 billion people, which was the basis of the India Today’s survey.
The India Today survey had revealed that about a resounding 78 per cent of respondents found the performance of PM Modi to be outstanding/good.
Titled as ‘Mood of the Nation survey’, the poll also found out that 66 per cent of the respondents believed that PM Modi should be the next PM of India while the Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi could rack up only 8 per cent of favourable votes in the favour of his candidature for the post of Prime Minister.
However, the soaring popularity of PM Modi and the declining credibility of Rahul Gandhi, as depicted in the India Today survey, came as a rude awakening for the Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who was quick to dismiss the India Today’s elaborate survey determining the mood of the nation by leaning on an unreliable Twitter poll organised by a Congress supporting individual and not an independent entity.
According to Shashi Tharoor, the poll ran by a Congress supporting person, who self-identifies as a journalist* (please see update at the end of the article), with approximately 18,000 followers on Twitter, which could manage to accumulate only 7,700 votes and was likely prone to rigging by Congress IT cell members, was more credible than the survey ran by an independent media organisation, just because it painted a rosier picture of the Congress party than the reality and projected Rahul Gandhi as the victorious, at least in one online poll.
This is not an aberration where Tharoor seems to have taken a leave of his good senses. If one has a cursory glance at the tweets posted by him in the last few days, it will be amply clear that Tharoor has been mouthing off inanities, especially after the Bhoomi Pujan ceremony of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
A day after PM Modi participated in the ground-laying ceremony of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and placed the ceremonial cornerstone to officially mark the construction of the Ram Mandir, Shashi Tharoor had an extended meltdown, posting a series of tweets, denouncing BJP for supposedly “hijacking” Lord Ram’s name. Tharoor appeared in a damage-control mode, as he tried to salvage declining fortunes of the Congress party, which had once questioned the existence of Lord Ram, by extolling the virtues that Lord Ram symbolised.
PM Modi’s presence at the Bhoomi Pujan ceremony of the Ram Mandir rattled Tharoor so much so that he cited trivial matters to attack PM Modi. In his speech during the Bhoomi Pujan ceremony, PM Modi had addressed the people of the country as “1.3 billion Indians”. However, Tharoor cavilled at PM Modi’s speech, tweeting that the population of India is 1.38 billion and that the omission of 8 crore people from the Prime Minister was worrisome.
Furthermore, the artistic rendition of PM Modi holding the hand of Lord Ram and taking him towards the Ram Mandir drew the ire of many opposition politicians, including Shashi Tharoor, who tweeted a Hindi limerick to slam the BJP for showing PM Modi’s stature bigger than Lord Ram. However, it was conspicuously lost on Tharoor that the Ram Mandir was a temple to Ram Lalla and it would be entirely logical that Lord Ram has a diminutive stature.
Shashi Tharoor’s recent inanities are reminiscent of a former Congress member, who was recently shown the door, apparently for insubordination and lack of discipline. Sanjay Jha, who was dismissed last month for his critical views on the Congress party, has long been the object of scorn and derision for his utterly preposterous tweets and foolish presumptions.
With Sanjay Jha ceasing to be the unofficial jester of the Congress party, it appears that Tharoor, perhaps, has taken it upon himself to fill the void in the absence of his former colleague and continue the responsibility of amusing the netizens with what was once Jha’s forte. As Congress continues to stare at political oblivion, and Rahul Gandhi doing little to salvage its declining fortunes, Tharoor seems to have assumed the new role of tickling the funny bones of social media users, even if that means peddling ludicrous inanities.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s inordinately silly tweets not only serve to amuse the party opponents and possibly embarass his supporters, but they also highlight the steady deterioration of the intellectual capacity of a leader who was once considered as one of the most erudite Congress leaders to a one resorting to fatuity and absurdity to mount an attack against the opposition. In fact, the India Today’s poll result is nothing but the reflection of this progressive and irreversible degeneration of the Congress party.
Update* – The Twitter user Ranvijay, after initial publication of this report, objected to himself being portrayed as a ‘Congress functionary’ and insisted that he was a journalist. The copy was updated to respect his whims. However, with passage of time and more losses by Rahul Gandhi in elections, Ranvijay became a more and more outspoken supporter of the party. Latest incident (see tweets below) in January 2025 shows that Ranvijay, whom Shashi Tharoor tried to pass off as an independent journalist, was likely to be actively collaborating with Congress IT cell. However, Ranvijay is not a Congress functionary, yet, in official capacity.
