By IANS,
New Delhi : After being asked to leave a five-star hotel, Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor used the social networking tool Twitter to give his reaction, pointing out that he was spending his “own savings”.
“I wld be ashamed if I was spending the people’s money. But I’m not – I’m spending my own savings,” Tharoor tweeted Tuesday afternoon, in reply to a question asked on Twitter.
Stung by a media report and also after the government enforced austerity measures, both External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and his junior Shashi Tharoor moved out of the luxury hotels where they have been staying for the past over three months.
“I have requested both the ministers to vacate hotel rooms,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said here Tuesday at a conference on indirect taxes.
Tharoor reacted that he would much rather be in his “official house”.
On a suggestion that Kerala House could be a temporary place for stay, Tharoor said: “I need 2 things daily that Kerala House doesn’t offer – a gym and some privacy. But I visit pretty often and meet people there.”
Incidentally, Tharoor often gets questions on Twitter on whether the government pays for his trips to his constituency, Thiruvananthapuram.
He had replied on Twitter that he never uses government money, as he usually stays in his own or friends’ residences.
Tharoor, who was staying at Hotel Taj Mahal on Man Singh Road, is now staying at the Indian Navy’s guesthouse at Kota House.