Modi throws down a challenge to Congress

PM dares party to allow non-Gandhi to become its president

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Hitting back at Congress leader Shashi Tharoor for his “chaiwala” (tea seller) remark, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday dared Congress to allow a non-Gandhi to become the party president.

Addressing a campaign rally for the second phase of Chhattisgarh legislative assembly elections scheduled on November 20, Modi said, “I want to challenge them. Let some good leader of Congress outside of the family become the party president for five years, then I will say that Jawaharlal Nehru really created a truly democratic system there”.

‘Time to give an account’

On November 14, Tharoor had said that it was because of the institutional structures enabled by first PM Nehru that a ‘chaiwala’ (tea-seller) could become premier.

“If today we have a chaiwala as prime minister, it is because Nehru ji made it possible to create the institutional structures through which any Indian can aspire to rise to the highest office in the land,” Tharoor said during the relaunch of his book, Nehru: The Invention of India.

Reacting to that, Modi said that even after four-and-a-half years, Congress could not digest the fact that a ‘chaiwala’ was heading the country.

“Even today after so many years, they say a ‘chaiwala’ became prime minister because of one great person,” he said.

Modi said four generations of Congress ruled India and it was time they gave an account of what they did for the country.

“People have disproved [the assumption] that it was the right of only one family to speak from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi. You can’t understand the difficulties faced by the poor but a ‘chaiwala’ can. Congress have kept the country in the dark with their lies which are ingrained in their minds,” the PM said.

He took another dig at Congress stating that while the creation of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh (MP) by former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a peaceful division, Congress created a mess during the creation of Telangana.

“Vajpayee created MP and Chhattisgarh and both the states are developing rapidly today. But just look at what the Congress did at the time of formation of Telangana. The state is still lagging behind,” he said.

Narendra Modi | Indian PM

PTI Police stand guard at the Cochin International Airport after women’s rights activist Trupti Desai (unseen) arrived to visit the Sabarimala temple, in Kochi, yesterday. Desai was forced to stay inside the Airport as hundreds of protesters blocked her way at the arrival gate.