'When I said the Gandhi family had to step aside, it was because we have consistently seen that the public has not accepted them.'
'He has destroyed the Youth Congress. Now he is trying to destroy the National Students Union of India. Next he will destroy the Congress. Whatever responsibility you give him he will destroy that.'
Former Kerala minister T H Mustafa was on Thursday suspended from the Congress for calling Rahul Gandhi a "joker" and saying that the party vice-president should be removed if he does not resign in the backdrop of the party's debacle in the Lok Sabha polls.
We look back at the many leaders who took contention with Rahul Gandhi in the recent past.
'From the time Rahul Gandhi entered the scene, I started feeling dissatisfied. No true Congressman will be able to agree with the way Rahul Gandhi functioned. He has not attained enough maturity or wisdom.' 'You cannot compare Rahul Gandhi with Narendra Modi. When you take into consideration Modi's political experience and abilities, nobody can think of projecting Rahul Gandhi against him.' 'The main culprits behind such a humiliating defeat are Veerappa Moily and P Chidambaram. It was Moily who did the maximum damage to people and the party.' T H Mustafa, one of the first Congress leaders to criticise Rahul Gandhi, speaks out in this interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
Shashi Tharoor speaks to Shobha Warrier on the controversy over his article seen as praising Narendra Modi and what the future holds for the Congress and Rahul Gandhi.