New Delhi: Union minister Kiren Rijiju came to Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s defence on Wednesday (May 28) as the Thiruvananthapuram MP faced fire from his own party for having, once again, shown support for the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, this time for a statement delivered thousands of kilometres away in Panama.“What does the Congress party want & How much they really care for the country?” Rijiju said on X.“Should the Indian MPs go to foreign nation and speak against India and its Prime Minister? There’s limit to political desperation!”Rijiju’s statement came after Tharoor faced criticism from within his party over his statement in Panama, where he was leading one of the seven multi-party delegations sent abroad by the Union government to communicate India’s collective resolve after the Pahalgam terror attack, Operation Sindoor and the four-day long military conflict with Pakistan.“What has changed in recent years is that the terrorists have also realised they will have a price to pay. For the first time, India breached the LoC (Line of Control) between India and Pakistan to conduct a surgical strike on a terror base, a launch pad- the Uri strike in September 2016- That was something we had not done before,” Tharoor said, while addressing the Indian diaspora in Panama.“Even during the Kargil War, we had not crossed the LoC but in Uri, we did it. Then came the attack in Pulwama. We not only crossed the LoC, we also crossed the international border and we struck a terrorist headquarters in Balakot. This time (in Operation Sindoor), we went beyond both of those. We have not only gone beyond LoC and international border, we struck in the Punjabi heartland of Pakistan and hit terror bases in nine places,” he said.In recent weeks, Tharoor has been at the centre of a storm over several of his statements in support of the BJP government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, especially since India’s military actions in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack.Congress’ former MP Udit Raj who has been routinely criticising Tharoor’s recent statements said that he should be declared as a “super spokesperson of the BJP”.“Alas! I could prevail upon PM Modi to declare you as super spokesperson of BJP, even declaring as foreign minister before landing in India,” he said. “How could you denigrate the golden history of Congress by saying that before PM Modi, India never crossed (the) LOC and International border. In 1965, Indian Army entered Pakistan at multiple points, which completely surprised the Pakistanis in the Lahore sector. In 1971, India tore Pakistan in two pieces and during UPA Govt, several surgical strikes were unleashed but drum beating was not done to encash politically. How could you be so dishonest to the party which gave you so much?”Congress’ media and publicity department chairman Pawan Khera then posted a photograph of officers of the 4th Sikh Regiment posing outside a captured Pakistani police station in Burki, Lahore district, and tagged Tharoor.“This image is from the Battle of Burki (also known as the Battle of Lahore, 1965), a significant engagement during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, fought between Indian infantry units and Pakistani armoured forces. Burki is a village located southeast of Lahore, near the India-Pakistan border, approximately 11 km from Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport, connected to the city by a bridge over the Bambawali-Ravi-Bedian (BRB) Canal,” he wrote on X.Later on Wednesday, Khera also posted a link to an October 2016 article which stated that external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, who was then the foreign secretary, had told a parliamentary standing committee that cross-border strikes had been conducted in the past too.“‘Professionally done, target-specific, limited-calibre counter-terrorist operations have been carried out across the LoC in the past too, but this is for the first time that the government has made it public’ Jaishankar said this to the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs in October 2016,” Khera pointed out, posting an excerpt from the news article.Khera’s post was then quoted by Congress MP and general secretary, media and communications in-charge, Jairam Ramesh.“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive…,” Ramesh wrote.The criticism that Tharoor has been facing from his party colleagues for his comments in Panama comes close on the heels of a row that had erupted over the composition of the delegations that have gone abroad. Tharoor, who had been named by the Modi government to lead one of the seven delegations, was not in the list of four names provided by the Congress that it had sent to be part of the delegations.Tharoor, however, was quick to thank the government for its invitation to lead an all-party delegation to “present our nation’s point of view on recent events”.The invitation to Tharoor, despite his name not being in the list presented by the Congress, came days after the Thiruvananthapuram MP’s remarks in interviews were seen as supportive of the BJP government. In an interview with The Wire’s Karan Thapar, he had applauded the government’s actions following Operation Sindoor and the military conflict with Pakistan. The Congress had then said that Tharoor’s statements are to be seen as his personal opinion.