New Delhi: Shashi Tharoor will attend Friday night's State dinner in honour of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge will not, party sources told media this evening.

Congress MP Tharoor - whose relationship with his party has lurched from crisis to crisis over the past six months, fuelled by speculation (that won't die) of a potentially seismic switch to the Bharatiya Janata Party - confirmed his participation this evening; he told reporters his invitation reflected the courtesy offered to the head of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs.

On neither Rahul Gandhi nor Mallikarjun Kharge, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the President of the country's largest opposition party, being offered a similar courtesy, Tharoor professed himself 'unaware of the process followed for invitations (to State dinners)'.

The apparent snubbing of Gandhi and Kharge comes a day after the former accused the government of discouraging meetings between visiting heads of state and opposition leaders.

Speaking to reporters outside Parliament, he said tradition, including that followed by the BJP government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, dictated visiting heads of state met with the Leader of the Opposition. "But these days... government suggests foreign leaders don't meet..."

Tharoor seemed to back Gandhi on that grouse; "... the LoP has made his point and I think the government should respond," he said. In response, government sources told NDTV no 'suggestion' - that Putin should not meet Gandhi - had been made, and that meetings between visiting leaders and individuals 'outside the governmental framework' is outside its ambit.

That moment of support, though, is not likely to smooth over another stand-off between Tharoor and the Congress as a result of the Putin State dinner invitation row.

Shashi Tharoor is widely seen as being on thin ice with the Congress after a number of recent comments praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These include remarks about his handling of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack and the consequent military strikes on Pakistan.

Also, earlier this month, in an article titled 'Indian Politics Are a Family Business', he offered a strong critique of family-led parties, like the Congress, and that did not go down well.

In June, as tension with the Congress grew, Tharoor said, "It (praise for the Prime Minister) is not a sign of my leaping to join his party... as some people have, unfortunately, been implying..."

In reality, the rift between MP and party has been growing steadily since mid-2022, when he was part of a group of Congress leaders that wrote to then-boss Sonia Gandhi asking for a change in leadership after a series of electoral defeats, starting with a drubbing in the 2019 federal election.

Source: NDTV