Tide turning against Modi government, Tharoor says

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has suffered an “irreparable and irreversible reputational damage” in the last four years, says Congress leader and former foreign diplomat Shashi Tharoor.

In the state capital to attend an event of the Indian Professional Congress — an outfit of the grand old party aimed at reaching out to professionals, the twotime MP from Thiruvananthapuram said a momentum was building against the Narendra Modi government and in 2019, the general elections results were sure to go against it.

On a warm Sunday afternoon, as Tharoor spoke — before the charge sheet in Sunanda Pushkar death case was filed yesterday, he claimed the Karnataka Assembly polls were going the Congress way.

Astonishingly close

But not attaching much importance to Karnataka, which he said was just a “way station”, the 62-yearold Congress leader said that elections in Gujarat, where Congress inched “astonishingly close” to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in many constituencies, showed that the tide was now turning against the saffron camp.

The former Union Minister, who currently is the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, also pointed out how defeats of the BJP in party strongholds like Gorakhpur and Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh recently had rendered a body blow to the party’s dream to return to power in 2019.

“What the BJP government and Prime Minister Modi has done in the past four years in power?” he asked, slamming them on the twin issues of Goods and Service Tax (GST) and demonetisation.

“GST was a good idea, which implemented in haste and in bad taste, has affected the whole tax system,” he said while pointing out how even top global economists had come down heavily on the GST, even calling it the most complex tax system.