Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Saturday dismissed Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri’s claim that Tharoor had insisted on including billionaire George Soros on the guest list for a 2009 dinner in the US.
Tharoor stated that his recollection of the dinner, hosted by Puri during his tenure as India’s Ambassador to the US, differed from the minister’s. “I was entirely unaware of any connection Mr. Soros might have had to any foundation in India and have never discussed it with him. My only memory of that event was hearing him strongly oppose our government’s stance on the West’s role in global warming,” the Thiruvananthapuram MP wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
The controversy began on December 15 when a BJP worker from Karnataka shared an old 2009 post by Tharoor, where he wrote, “Met old friend George Soros, upbeat about India and curious about our neighborhood. He’s far more than an investor: a concerned world citizen.”
Responding to this, Puri said on Friday that Soros had attended a formal dinner at his New York residence. He claimed that Tharoor himself had provided the guest list for the dinner and included Soros, who was allegedly a benefactor of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. Puri suggested that Tharoor, then the Minister of State for External Affairs, was eager to meet Soros for this reason.
Puri added that, in hindsight, Soros’s invitation stemmed from his association with the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, which explained Tharoor’s interest in meeting him.
