By IANS,
New Delhi, April 19 (IANS) Shashi Tharoor is likely to make a statement in the Lok Sabha Tuesday, two days after resigning as the minister of state for external affairs over an ugly IPL row, Congress sources said Monday.
The decision was taken after Tharoor briefly visited parliament house and met party leaders including senior ministers Pranab Mukherjee, A.K. Antony and P. Chidambaram.
After being absent during question hour in the Lok Sabha, the former UN official reached parliament about 40 minutes after noon and left at 2 p.m., without interacting with the media.
The sources told IANS that Mukherjee, the leader of the house, has assured Tharoor that all efforts would be made by the government to allow him to make statement in the Lok Sabha Tuesday.
The opposition had prevented Tharoor from speaking in the house Friday, forcing him to lay his prepared statement defending himself in parliament and to read it out to journalists outside.
The MP from Thiruvananthapuram was forced to quit from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government Sunday over allegations that he had influenced the Kochi franchise of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
After his meeting with Mukherjee and Antony which Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal also attended, Tharoor had a separate 45-minute discussion with Bansal. Chidambaram joined the duo briefly, said the sources.
Contacted by IANS, Antony refused to say what transpired at their meeting.
Tharoor’s 11-month ministerial tenure ended after Manmohan Singh and Congress leaders found that his continuance could cause more embarrassment to the party.
Tharoor had Friday had put up a spirited defence of himself in the Lok Sabha, insisting he had done no wrong and not used his office to promote the interest of his Dubai-based friend Sunanda Pushkar.
The businesswoman got sweat equity worth Rs.70 crore in Rendezvous Sports World, a member of the consortium that won the IPL Kochi franchise.
On Sunday, Pushkar announced she was giving up her stake in the franchise.
But it failed to save Tharoor.
The controversy began after IPL commissioner Lalit Modi said on his twitter account that Tharoor had asked him to suppress information about Pushkar getting a stake in the IPL Kochi franchise.