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I read a sentence in "The Hindu" which was:

After having accused the Congress of working in favour of Pakistan, it appears to resurrected the issue of "citizenship".

At first glance, the sentence seemed wrong to me because of the past form of a verb used after "to". But then I got to suspect that the auxiliary verb "have" was declared implicitly between the two because it had already been used before and so there was no need of it. Am I right in thinking so?

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  • You must include "have". The verb phrase is ungrammatical without it. – BillJ May 3 at 10:01
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The sentence is ungrammatical, it should be

After having accused the Congress of working in favour of Pakistan, it appears to have resurrected the issue of "citizenship".

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  • But, then, don't you think there was no need of using it again since it had already been used before (in "after having"). – Kelvin May 3 at 9:18
  • No, it appears to be a mistake in the original, a letter to a newspaper about politics. "It" refers to the ruling party. – jonathanjo May 3 at 9:26
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it had already been used before and so there was no need of it. Am I right in thinking so?

You are partially correct.

The sentence as written is wrong, and it's wrong because of the phrase I've put in bold:

✘ After having accused the Congress of working in favour of Pakistan, it appears to resurrected the issue of "citizenship."

One way to fix it is to repeat have:

✔ After having accused the Congress of working in favour of Pakistan, it appears to have resurrected the issue of "citizenship."

However, there is another possibility: don't repeat have but change the verb tense:

✔ After having accused the Congress of working in favour of Pakistan, it appears to be resurrecting the issue of "citizenship."

✔ After having accused the Congress of working in favour of Pakistan, it appears to resurrect the issue of "citizenship."

Note that in all versions of this sentence, the referent of the pronoun it is unclear. (This is especially obvious in the final version that I gave.) This is fine if there is a previous sentence that it is referencing.

But if there is no previous sentence, then all versions are badly phrased, and they should be changed to something like one of the following:

✔ After having accused the Congress of working in favour of Pakistan, the issue of "citizenship" appears to have been resurrected.

✔ Accusing the Congress of working in favour of Pakistan appears to have resurrected the issue of "citizenship."

✔ Accusing the Congress of working in favour of Pakistan appears to be resurrecting the issue of "citizenship."

✔ Accusing the Congress of working in favour of Pakistan appears to resurrect the issue of "citizenship."

Note how the inclusion or omission of after affects how this can be written.

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