Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who often makes headlines for his English vocabulary, took an unusual route to criticise the BJP-led government in the Parliament.

While discussing the interim Budget presented by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, the Congress MP delivered his critique through a poem in Hindi.

“Karz ke bojh se aam aadmi tar tar ho gaya, mehenga ho gaya khana peena, mehenga ghar ho gaya (The common man is overwhelmed by the burden of debt, food and housing has become expensive),” Tharoor said while sharing a poem by his former colleague Vijay Dhillon.

Further taking a dig at the Modi government he recited: “Kuch chuninda yaaro ko bade bungalow ho gaye, baalon se pairon tak hum kangle ho gaye (Some selected friends got big bungalows, we became destitute from hair to feet).

Later, the Congress party shared Tharoor’s video on their X handle, while the Lok Sabha MP took to the social media platform to inform that Dhillon wrote the poem on his request.

“Full credit for authorship to my friend and former Haryana Congress colleague Vijay Dhillon whose poetry, both serious and witty, I truly enjoy. He wrote this at my request,” Tharoor wrote on X.

Earlier in the day, while initiating the debate on the Interim Budget, Tharoor accused the Narendra Modi government of being “all talk and no action”.

In a swipe aimed at Nirmala Sitharaman’s remarks describing GDP as governance, development and performance, Tharoor said that under the Modi government ‘G’ “stands for governmental intrusion and tax terrorism, ‘D’ for demographic betrayal and ‘P’ for poverty continuing”.

“This actual ‘GDP’ also jettisons the trinity of ‘demography, democracy and diversity’ that the government claims to be serving,” he said, according to PTI.

Tharoor said that in 2014 the people chose to offer a mandate to the BJP-led NDA government with the hope that this government would come through on their “bloated rhetoric” of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas.

“Fast forward to 10 years later, we find the people of this country have been sadly betrayed by a government whose economic mismanagement in this past decade has left the people of India staring at widespread distress, hardship, low incomes and high unemployment,” the Congress leader said, according to the news agency.