Tide is turning against Modi govt: Tharoor

The ruling 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 two-time 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 Sunday afternoon, as Tharoor spoke to IANS – before the chargesheet in Sunanda Pushkar death case was filed on Monday, he claimed the Karnataka Assembly polls were going the Congress way.

But not attaching much importance to Karnataka, which he said was just a “way station”, the 62-year-old Congress leader said that elections in Gujarat, where Congress inched “astonishingly close” to the 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 the best global economists had come down heavily on the GST, even calling it the most complex tax system.

“Only the ones eating out of their hands think otherwise,” said the erudite Congress Lok Sabha member, who is knowing for his quaint words and subtle expressions.

In his interview he charged the Modi dispensation of rechristening the names of many schemes and welfare programmes of the Congress-led UPA governments and rolling them out as their own.

Asked to comment on whether Congress President Rahul Gandhi when pitted against Prime Minister Modi had a certain disadvantage, Tharoor was quick in his defense of the Gandhi scion, saying: “India has a parliamentary system and not a presidential one, which though has its own merits, does not fit in the Indian context.”

Elections in Gujarat, where Congress inched “astonishingly close” to the BJP in many constituencies, showed that the tide was now turning against the saffron camp – SHASHI THAROOR