On Day 1 of Winter Session, Shashi Tharoor Posted a Selfie of 'Attractive' LS. Then He Had to Apologise

After a row over Shashi Tharoor’s tweet on the Lok Sabha being ‘an attractive place to work’ due to women colleagues, the Congress MP had to issue a clarification saying the selfie with his fellow female MPs was just a “show of workplace camaraderie”.

“The whole selfie thing was done (at the women MPs’ initiative) in great good humour & it was they who asked me to tweet it in the same spirit. I am sorry some people are offended but i was happy to be roped in to this show of workplace camaraderie. That’s all this is,” Tharoor said in a clarification after endless criticism on the microblogging platform over his previous tweet.

Tharoor had shared a selfie with six women MPs cutting across party lines, asking: “Who says the Lok Sabha isn’t an attractive place to work?”

Trinamool Congress’s Nusrat Jahan and Mimi Chakraborty, Amarinder Singh’s wife Preneet Kaur, NCP’s Supriya Sule, Congress’s Jothimani, and Tamizhachi Thangapandia had posed with Tharoor.

However, he was met with instant criticism, with people slamming the Congress leader for reducing his women colleagues to their looks.

“Women in the Lok Sabha are not decorative items meant to make your workspace “attractive”. They are parliamentarians and you are being disrespectful and sexist,” said author Vidya Krishnan.

Others also pointed out to apparent objectification in the tweet.

Tharoor had earlier also been criticised for a ‘sexist and transphobic’ remark made during a debate, in which he said that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wanted all power without any responsibility, like ‘eunuchs’. Later he clarified that he had quoted a British politician who had used the word ‘harlot’.

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