Seeking to exploit a crude meme tweeted by the Congress mocking the prime minister’s 'chaiwala’ past, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, including Arun Jaitley and Amit Shah, will listen to PM’s radio talk ‘Mann ki Baat’ while having tea with people across poll-bound Gujarat on Sunday.
The event, to be held at all 50,128 polling booths in 182 assembly seats, is named ‘Mann ki Baat - Chai Ke Saath’.
While BJP chief Amit Shah will attend the program in the Dariyapur constituency in Ahmedabad, the Union finance minister will have tea with people at a booth in Adajan area of the Surat-West seat, said a party release.
Other party leaders who would join the program at various places are Union ministers Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Uma Bharti, Smriti Irani, Jual Oram, Parshottam Rupala, state BJP president Jitu Vaghani, chief minister Vijay Rupani and several Gujarat ministers, MLAs and MPs.
The event is being organised ahead of Narendra Modi’s tour of Gujarat on November 27 and 29, during which he will address eight rallies in Saurashtra and south Gujarat which would be going to polls on December 9.
Referring to the meme mocking Modi over his tea-seller background, tweeted by the Youth Congress, state BJP in-charge Bhupender Yadav on November 23 had announced this event.
The Twitter handle of the Youth Congress’s magazine “Yuva Desh” kicked up a row with the tweet which was seen to be mocking Modi’s humble past and English skills. Soon after, the Youth Congress apologised and removed the tweet.
Gujarat Chief Minister Rupani had dubbed the tweet as “blatantly classist and anti-poor”.
Ahead of 2014 Lok Sabha polls, senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar had said that Modi, a former tea-seller, could never become prime minister.
The BJP leveraged the remark to launch Modi’s ‘chai pe charcha’ sessions as part of the election campaign.
