Not upset or angry with anyone in party: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor
Kochi (PTI): Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Sunday said he was not upset or angry with anyone in the Kerala unit of the party and has no reservations in speaking to anyone as "we are not in kindergarten to refrain from talking to each other".
Speaking to media in the port city of Kochi, where he came to attend a state-level conclave of the All India Professionals' Congress, the Thiruvananthapuram MP said he has not spoken against anyone in the party or acted against its directives and has no clue why such a controversy has been created.
"I am not upset or angry with anyone. I have not blamed or accused anyone. There are no complaints or issues from my end. I have no problem seeing everyone as one and neither do I have any reservations about speaking to anyone," he said before the event.
On being asked whether he would be speaking to Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the state assembly V D Satheesan and Kerala PCC (KPCC) president K Sudhakaran at the event, Tharoor said that the latter was not well and would be participating via video conference.
Regarding Satheesan, he said that "if we see each other at the venue, then we will see".
"If they talk to me, will I not respond? We are not in kindergarten to refrain from talking or speaking to each other. But if we are not in the same place at the same time, how will we talk or speak to one another?" he asked.
Satheesan, without naming Tharoor, had recently said that any kind of sectarianism or parallel activities would not be allowed in the party and warned that such moves would be dealt with "seriously".
It was one of several remarks made by the LoP in the wake of Tharoor's Malabar tour which seems to have rattled a significant section in Congress in the state with a few of them sensing an "agenda" behind his move.
Tharoor's opponents in the party feel that through his programmes, he was trying to position himself as an ideal chief ministerial candidate of the Congress-led UDF for the 2026 Assembly polls to end the rule of the CPI(M)-led LDF, which has been in power since 2016.
In the wake of the brewing controversy over his recent tour, the disciplinary panel of KPCC, on Saturday, issued a strict directive to its leaders not to bypass the respective party forums while attending programmes in each place and directed the leaders to intimate them in advance.
When this was pointed out to the Thiruvananthapuram MP by reporters on Sunday, he said that District Congress Committee (DCC) presidents are always informed whenever he attends any public event.
However, if it was a private event, there was no need to inform DCC presidents about the same, he added.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
