Cracking the whip, Congress today removed Shashi Tharoor as party spokesperson for his praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which did not go down well with the Kerala unit of the party.

“Congress President Sonia Gandhi has accepted the recommendation of the AICC disciplinary committee to remove Shashi Tharoor from the list of spokespersons of the AICC with immediate effect.

“The Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee had submitted a complaint in this regard to the disciplinary committee,” said party general secretary organisation Janardan Dwivedi in a press release.

Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee had prepared a report against Tharoor, which was referred to AICC’s disciplinary action committee a few days ago.

The report of the Kerala unit had held that Tharoor’s adulatory statements about Modi had hurt Congress workers in Kerala, who had worked sincerely and tirelessly for his victory from Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat.

Tharoor had earlier reacted sarcastically to the Kerala unit’s move, saying this would mean the State leadership would finally read what he actually wrote instead of oral summaries.

The complaint by the Kerala Congress Committee had come at a time when Tharoor had accepted the invite by the Prime Minister to be a brand ambassador of “Swachch Bharat” mission of the NDA government.

Tharoor had also gone to the US during the time the Prime Minister was in that country and had appeared on various television channels. Party sources say that nobody was assigned from Congress to the US during Modi’s visit and speak on the party’s behalf.

Tharoor has not been briefing media at the AICC from June 4 after his piece in Huffington Post praising Modi kicked up a big row in Congress.

The Congress leader had said that it would be “churlish” if his party did not take note of Modi’s efforts to sound gracious and accommodative and reinvent himself from a “hate figure into an avatar of modernity and progress”.

Congress had snubbed him immediately, describing it as his “personal view”. Since then Tharoor did not brief the media from AICC podium.

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