By IANS,
New Delhi : While the Congress party says it would take “appropriate action” against Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor for his “cattle class” travel remark, his fellow Congress MP from Kerala K. Sudhakaran has tweeted in his support.
“It’s sad we shouted ‘sensitivity’ for two days to a tweet by @shashitharoor while we were actually being ‘oversensitive’,” said Sudhakaran, who has more than 2,000 followers on the twitter.
Sudhakaran, who is known as the party’s strong man in the Marxist bastion Kannur in Kerala, said: “Let’s not lose our sense of humour! tweeting is fun! So let’s keep tweeting tweeple.”
He said: “We should also learn to take things sportingly and leave it at that, and focus on bigger things.”
Sudhakaran added that “some tweets shouldn’t be taken so seriously and (be) left at that.”
Tharoor ran into trouble for a message he posted on the social networking site Twitter in which he said sarcastically in response to a query that he would travel “cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!”.
The Congress said it would take “appropriate action” against him at a suitable time and reiterated that the party condemned his comments.
The minister, who is in Liberia on an official visit, tweeted late Thursday night that he had “learned belatedly of fuss over my tweet replying to journo’s query whether I would travel to Kerala in ‘cattle class'”.
He pointed out that the phrase “cattle class” was used in the journalist’s query, which he just repeated.
“It’s a silly expression but means no disrespect to economy travellers, only to airlines for herding us in like cattle. Many have misunderstood,” he tweeted.
He admitted that the phrase when translated into Malayalam sounded worse, especially if taken out of context. “To those hurt by the belief that my repeating the phrase showed contempt: sorry,” said Tharoor.
He also explained that the word “holy cows” was not referring to any individual. “Holy cows are NOT individuals but sacrosanct issues or principles that no one dares challenge. Wish critics would look it up.”
Criticising Tharoor, Leader of Opposition in Kerala assembly Oommen Chandy of the Congress said: “Political workers should behave like servants of the people and not their owners.”