All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary, Madhusudan Mistri, dared Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to declare the constituency from which he would be contesting Parliament elections.
``Everyone is talking big of BJP’s prime ministerial candidate so we challenged Narendra Modi that if had guts than he should announce from where he would contest next Parliament elections”, dared Narendra Modi while making an attack on his rival colleague from Gujrat. ``The constituency of our big leaders are clear to everyone so they were provoking everyone to fight from there but I wanted to know that if Modi had some strength than he should declare from which constituency he would contest from UP, Gujrat or somewhere else”, Mistri who is also in-charge of Party organization here in UP said. Mistri threw above challenge while he was addressing media persons along with state president, Nirmal Khatri soon after the meeting of Congress’ newly constituted State Election Committee (SEC) on Wednesday afternoon.
Mistry, a known detractor of the Gujarat Chief Minister, had few days back said that Modi was unsure of success due to which he was not announcing the constituency. He also attack BJP prime ministerial for tall claims made by him in rallies. ``Modi is talking of changing India so I wanted to ask him that he should first change Gujrat than talk of changing India”, asserted Khatri. He also took on media coverage against Congress. ``I prepared a report on directions of Rahul Gandhi and I can say that the situation is not so bad for Congress as projected”, claimed Mistri.
The in-charge of party affairs here in UP as well as state president Nirmal Khatri both also refused to say anything against union minister for steel Beni Prasad Verma, even when he along with senior leaders like Salman Khursheed, RPN Singh, as well as Rahul Gandhi not attended the meeting on Wednesday. ``I will not say anything against what Beni Verma was saying against the Party before media”, disclosed Mistri but he went on to say that the matter will be `resolved’ within the Party very soon pointing towards some stern action against union minister. It may be mentioned here that when Beni claimed that Khatri is on his way out, Mistri asserted that there will be no change and MP from Faizabad will continue as UPCC chief.
About any under-standing with Samajwadi over leaving the Parliament seat from Yadav’s family members as the Samajwadi Party done so far by not announcing any candidate from Rae Bareli and Amethi represented by Sonia and Rahul Gandhi respectively, Mistri said that why he would open his card now as elections is still far away. On the delay in announcement of UPCC committee, Mistri said that the list is with Party president Sonia Gandhi and once she would clear it, the Committee will be declared.
Meanwhile giving minutes of the first meeting of SEC here at Party state head-quarter on Wednesday afternoon, Nirmal Khatri said that all the members had empowered Sonia Gandhi to make a final call on the name of candidates. ``Sonia Gandhi as well as Rahul Gandhi hails from UP so they knew all the leaders very well hence we entrusted them to decided the candidates”, disclosed Khatri while adding that now the discussions will be made in Screening Committee followed by Central Election Committee after which Sonia will finally announced the candidates. When asked that Rahul is advocating to select candidate for lok Sabha elections after taking opinion of ground level workers and they directly empowered Sonia to make a final call which contradict it, Mistri replied that this time Rahulji had selected 15 districts of the country under the pilot project to test the above experiment and the above exercise will be carried also in two distrists of UP – Varanasi and Sant Kabir Nagar (Khalilabad Parliament). He said that very soon they prepared a voter list comprising of all local prominent Congress leaders, office bearers and conduct a poll after appointing returning officer. He said that who so ever in the Party would win that elections, he will be the final candidate for that Parliament seat. Mistri said that if this exercise will turn successful in this Parliament polls than they would implement it in more districts in future elections.