Told him about Rahul’s demand for separate fisheries ministry: Tharoor on viral pic with Giriraj

PTI, Mar 10, 2021, 7:49 PM IST

New Delhi: As a picture showing BJP leader Giriraj Singh whispering something to a smiling Shashi Tharoor while almost hugging him outside Parliament went viral, the Congress leader said it was taken after he told the Union minister about Rahul Gandhi”s demand for a separate fisheries ministry.

With the photograph posted on Twitter evoking witty comments, Tharoor shared his version of the sequence of events in a tweet tagging the photo.

“This was when I told @girirajsinghbjp that a Department of Fisheries in a larger Ministry of Animal Husbandry is not the same as a Ministry of Fisheries, which @incIndia & @RahulGandhi have rightly been asking for (& as I have done since 2014),” the MP from Thiruvananthapuram said.

BJP leaders, including Singh, the Minister of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries, had taken a swipe at Gandhi last month over his remark that there was no “dedicated” fisheries ministry.

At a public meeting in Puducherry, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also expressed shock over Gandhi’s statement.

Responding to the prime minister’s swipe, Gandhi had tweeted, “Dear PM, Fisherfolk need an independent and dedicated ministry of fisheries, not just a department within a ministry.”

In 2019, the Modi government had formed a Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying.