New Delhi, April 18: “Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs, has submitted his resignation from the Council of Ministers to the Prime Minister today. The Prime Minister has forwarded his resignation letter to the President with a recommendation that it be accepted,” said a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office here tonight.
The Indian Premier League Kochi franchise controversy reached a crescendo and took with it the ministerial position of Tharoor who drove to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s residence tonight and submitted his resignation.
A little before Tharoor did the only honourable thing left for him to do after his name was sullied by the media in connection with the Kochi franchise deal with IPL, his Dubai-based businesswoman friend Sunanda Pushkar surrendered her Rs 70 crore sweat equity, gifted by the IPL Kochi consortium.
Tharoor (54) is a first time MP from Thiruvananthapuram and there was a controversy from the time the Congress offered him the ticket to contest the 2009 election in Kerala.
An international diplomat who even aspired for the big post in the UN, he was dogged by controversy ever since he became Minister for his tweets in the social networking site Twitter.
Not just the Opposition but many in his own party had been demanding his scalp for his inadvertent mix-up in the IPL imbroglio.
|