Thousands of people in Delhi had an unusual delightful company of BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi over the evening tea on Wednesday. From being a topic of customary political discussions at tea stalls, Modi appeared in the role of a discussant interacting with people at over 50 tea stalls in Delhi and the neighbouring cities of Noida, Ghaziabad and Gurgaon.
The exercise called ‘chai pe charcha’ aimed at connecting to people; understand the issues concerning them and suggest a viable solution as part of BJP’s campaign for the upcoming lok Sabha polls. Public mood was on a high when the BJP leader, who led his early days as a tea-seller, described the tea stalls as ‘footpath Parliament’ and promised them direct interaction at regular intervals.
The people of Delhi were a bit disappointed at the end as they did not get the opportunity to speak to Modi. However, they got an assurance from the Gujarat Chief Minister for another interaction. “Several suggestions could not be taken up due to time constraints but we will keep interacting frequently,” Modi said while concluding the two-hour long discussion which he held from a tea stall in Ahmedabad in Gujarat through live streaming. The topic of first discussion was ‘Good Governance’ while the next interaction will focus on ‘Women Empowerment’. Those who could not make their way to tea stalls, interacted with Modi over social networking sites.
Among the crowd of hundreds, a youth from Noida had the opportunity to interact with Modi as he suggested him to develop a network of universities and research centres across the country and connect them with development of the cities. His suggestion found a warm response from the BJP’s PM candidate who said a compilation of research works in all universities would be done and they will be made available online. “A network of universities and premier education and research centres will be developed if a BJP-led Government is formed at the Centre. Further, all published national and international research works will be compiled and uploaded on a dedicated website. This will prove helpful in development of the country in all fields,” Modi said.
In Delhi, the ‘chai pe charcha’ was held at 41 tea stalls. These included tea stalls in rural areas like Narela, Bawana and Najafgarh as well as posh areas like Mandir Marg and CR Park among others. Senior BJP leaders — including Delhi unit president Vijay Goel, Opposition leader in the Delhi Assembly Harsh Vardhan and Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha president Anurag Thakur too joined the people over tea.
“People showed great enthusiasm while interacting with Modi. The interaction was completely technology-based. We are hopeful to have further discussion with Narendra Modi in coming days,” said Arundhati Rajpal, a volunteer of Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG), which organised the programme.