Thiruvananthapuram/IBNS: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday made a veiled jibe at the Congress over the presence of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and local Congress MP Shashi Tharoor at the inauguration of Vizhinjam International Seaport in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram.

"I would like to tell the Chief Minister, who is a strong pillar of the INDI alliance. Shashi Tharoor is also present here. Many people will get their sleep disturbed by today's event."

The inauguration of the Rs. 8,800-crore worth seaport saw the presence of Vijayan and Tharoor, who are from the Left and Congress respectively.

While the ruling Left is opposed to the Congress in Kerala, both the camps are in the INDIA bloc which challenges Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in national politics.

Tharoor receives PM Modi at Thiruvananthapuram Airport

Raising eyebrows of many, Tharoor, who has recently praised Modi's foreign policies, personally went to the Thiruvananthapuram Airport to welcome the Prime Minister on Thursday.

Tharoor, who has also refused to blame the Modi government over 'intelligence failure' in Pahalgam, managed to receive the Prime Minister in his parliamentary constituency "on time" despite facing delays at the Delhi airport, which he claimed to be "dysfunctional".

Tharoor says no country has 100 percent foolproof intelligence

Tharoor appeared to dismiss the criticisms of the government intelligence service over the Pahalgam terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22, saying that no country had a foolproof intelligence service.

Speaking to ANI, Tharoor said: "No country can ever have a foolproof 100 per cent intelligence. We will never know about the various terror attacks that were successfully thwarted."

"We only get to know about the ones that we failed to thwart," he said.

"There were failures, I agree, but that should not be our main focus right now," he said.

Referring to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Tharoor said, "We have got the example of Israel, the world's best intelligence services according to everybody, which were taken by surprise on October 7, just two years ago."

"It seems to me, just as Israel is waiting till the end of the war before they demand accountability, similarly, I think we too should see the present crisis through and then demand accountability from the government," he said.