Madhusudan Mistry dares Narendra Modi to quit as Gujarat Chief Minister

NEW DELHI: AICC General Secretary Madhusudan Mistry, the Congress candidate against Narendra Modi in the Vadodara Lok Sabha constituency, has challenged the BJP PM candidate to quit as Gujarat chief minister and face him in the election on a levelplaying field. Maintaining that if Modi was calling himself a ‘chaiwala’ (tea seller), he (Mistry) was a ‘chaliwala’ (slum-dweller), the Congress leader charged Modi with “playing caste card to mislead Dalits” and dared him to reveal his caste.

“I am challenging Modi to quit as CM and face me on level-playing filed. Why does he need all the administrative support to fight against me,” Mistry asked. Holding a press conference at the AICC headquarters before he left for Vadodara on Thursday evening, Mistry said, “Yesterday, Modi said the Congress made a Dalit to withdraw his candidature to make way for me. It is a blatant lie as our candidate (Rawat) himself had asked the leadership to field a senior person against the BJP’s PM nominee. The intention of Modi is to play caste-card to try and mislead Dalits. I deplore this blatant attempt by somebody aiming for the top political post of the country. If Modi is so insistent on playing his caste card, I challenge him to reveal before the people of India his own caste first.”

Mistry asked “if Modi is so concerned about Dalits, why did he drop a Dalit BJP leader, RL Verma. He must explain”. Mistry has also targeted Modi’s attempt to politically project him as a ‘chaiwala’ (tea seller), a reference to his reported childhood vocation. “What is Modi trying to show off by calling himself a ‘chaiwala’. What’s the big deal about it? I am a chaliwala (slum-dweller). I was born and brought up in a slum. I had greased cattle and also loaded cow-dung and firewood to earn a living. But I also studied, did my MA and went to Oxford and became an activist. The Congress has also made this chaliwala a Member of Parliament and a AICC General Secretary. So if Modi is obsessed about his chaiwala past let me say Vadodara will witness a fight between a chailwala and a chaliwala”.

Reacting to Mistry’s charges, BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said: “Rahul had started this debate about holding primaries to select candidates for the Congress. Now one such candidate (Narendra Rawat) chosen through the primaries has been withdrawn by the Congress and another (Mistry) who lost the polls from Sabarkantha seat and was sent to the Rajya Sabha has been fielded. That whole structure about primaries which was built has fallen.