The opposition's call for a no confidence motion on Friday was to speak out and engage the government on issues ranging from jobs and farmers' issues to lynchings and atrocities against dalits, said Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.

"After the washout of that session many opposition parties said we have lost an opportunity to place before the nation the failures of this government – the economic mismanagement, the mis-governance, the agricultural stagnation, farmers' suicide, joblessness and unemployment, the decline in the economic growth," he said.

"So, when parliament came around again, many opposition parties, I think it was something like 8, may have been even more by the end of the process and may have been a dozen, all said we want to have a vote of no-confidence just so that we can express our dissatisfaction before the nation and that is precisely what the vote of no-confidence will enable us to do," Tharoor added.

The MP, who represents Thiruvananthapuram in the Lok Sabha, also stood by his "Hindu Pakistan" comment and said it was taken out of context.

Read the full text of Shashi Tharoor's interview here

"I was speaking very clearly on the subject of challenges to Indian democracy and secularism. I said one of the big challenges we have is indeed the fact that the ruling party has an ideology which they call “Hindu Rashtra,” he said in an interview.

A no-confidence motion against the Narendra Modi government was moved in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

The speaker named all opposition members who had moved similar no-confidence motion notices and said TDP's Kesineni Srinivas would move his motion as his name had come up in the lottery.

The member of the TDP, which had quit the ruling NDA coalition in March protesting against the government not giving a special package to Andhra Pradesh, moved the motion during Zero Hour which was admitted by the Speaker.

First Published:Jul 19, 2018 10:20 PM IST