Tharoor, Hardeep clash over 2009 dinner party with George Soros in the US

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Saturday (December 21) dismissed Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri's claim that he (Tharoor) had insisted that billionaire George Soros be invited to an Indian embassy dinner in the US in 2009

On Friday, Puri, then India’s permanent representative to the UN, reacted to Tharoor’s post on X that he had met Soros at a formal dinner in Puri’s New York home..

Also read: George Soros has no proven track record of destabilising governments

Puri's allegation

In turn, Puri hit back saying it was Tharoor, then a minister of state, who gave the list of invitees, and the "gentleman (Soros) was among the benefactors of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and the minister was keen to meet him".

Tharoor said Puri's recollections of the dinner hosted by the latter during his tenure as the Indian ambassador to the US as well as the permanent representative to the UN differs from what the Congress MP remembers.

Tharoor's counter

"I was completely unaware of any Soros having any connection to any foundation in India and I have never discussed it with him either. All I remember hearing from him at that occasion was his strong objection to our government's stand on the West's responsibility for global warming," the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha member wrote on X.

The row kicked off on December 15 when an X user who calls himself a BJP worker showed Tharoor an old post from 2009 in which Tharoor wrote that he "met old friend Soros… He's far more than an investor: a concerned world citizen".

Watch| George Soros: The man world leaders love to hate

Soros storm

Soros has been in the eye of a storm in India after the Bharatiya Janata Party, which Soros has attacked, alleged a nexus between the hedge fund tycoon and Congress leader Sonia Gandhi.

The Congress has said the BJP's allegations regarding Soros and Sonia were aimed at diverting attention from the Adani bribery row.