Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday skipped the meeting of Congress LS MPs chaired by Rahul Gandhi.
According to party sources Tharoor had already informed the party about his unavailability.
Another senior Congress leader and Chandigarh MP Manish Tiwari was also absent in the meeting.
According to Shashi Tharoor's X timeline he was at an event hosted by Prabha Khaitan Foundation in Kolkata last night.
Gandhi, who is the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, chaired a meeting with Congress MPs in the Lower House and also heard the views of the party legislators besides taking their feedback.
The Leader of Opposition stated at the meeting that the government seemed "under pressure" from the opposition on both Vande Mataram and election reforms debates, party sources said.
This is the third time the Congress MP has skipped the party meeting.
Earlier, the Thiruvananthapuram MP on December 1 clarified that he did not intentionally skip the Congress strategic group meeting held a day earlier, stating that he was on a flight returning from Kerala when the meeting took place.
Responding to questions on his absence, the Lok Sabha MP said, "I did not skip it; I was on a plane, coming from Kerala."
Tharoor's absence from the meeting, chaired by Sonia Gandhi to discuss the party's strategy for the winter session of Parliament had drawn attention within political circles, especially given that he had also missed the Congress meeting on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) issue earlier, citing ill health.
According to Tharoor's office, the MP was travelling with his 90-year-old mother on a later flight from Kerala, making it impossible for him to reach Delhi in time. Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal was also unable to attend due to his engagements in local body election campaigning in Kerala.
Tharoor's repeated absence from key party deliberations has become a point of discussion within the Congress.
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