A major political storm erupted on Friday night after the official guest list for the lavish state dinner hosted for Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed that Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Rajya Sabha LoP Mallikarjun Kharge were deliberately excluded, while Congress MP Shashi Tharoor was prominently invited, triggering accusations of protocol breach and internal party discord.

The controversy gained explosive momentum barely twenty-four hours after Rahul Gandhi publicly accused the Modi Government of “insecurity” for consistently denying foreign dignitaries permission to meet the Leader of Opposition, with Congress now alleging that the selective dinner invitation was a calculated insult designed to humiliate the party’s top leadership.

Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh confirmed that neither Rahul Gandhi nor Mallikarjun Kharge received invitations, while media chief Pawan Khera went further, slamming the government for “daily violations of democratic protocol” and declaring that any party member who accepts such an invitation when the constitutional LoPs are snubbed must seriously examine their own conscience.

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In a pointed attack clearly aimed at Tharoor, Khera stated that politics had obviously been played in the selection of guests and those who willingly participate in such events bear equal responsibility, intensifying the discomfort within the party over one of its most visible faces sharing the table with Putin while the Gandhi family and party president were kept away.

Tharoor defended his decision to attend by citing historical precedent that the Chairperson of the Parliament’s External Affairs Committee has traditionally been invited to such state banquets, adding that he was unaware of the criteria used for the current list, but the episode has left the Congress rank and file fuming at what they call a deliberate attempt by the ruling dispensation to divide and demean the principal opposition.

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