Cong snubs Jairam,says Modi poses no challenge

Sources said the Rural Development Minister’s remarks have not gone down well with the party leadership,which has been dismissing Modi as a leader with no relevance outside Gujarat and asserting that he posed no challenge to the Congress.

The party,in fact,has been relishing the all-out war which had broken out in the BJP after Modi’s elevation and training its guns at the BJP using the contents of L K Advani’s resignation letter.

“We don’t consider Narendra Modi as a challenge to the Congress. We think he is a challenge for the BJP and the NDA,” Congress general secretary and party spokesperson Shakeel Ahmed said while rejecting Ramesh’s remarks.

He was alluding to the upheaval within the BJP and the NDA after Modi’s elevation.

He said what Ramesh said might be his personal view and the party did not share that view at all.

“The considered opinion and view of the Congress is that we don’t consider Modi as a challenge,” he said.

Deviating from the Congress narrative,Ramesh had on Thursday said that Modi will certainly impose a challenge.

In his words,the Gujarat Chief Minister represents not just a managerial challenge,but also an ideological challenge.

He had also called him an formidable campaigner even while dubbing him “India’s first authentic Fascist”.

While the Congress snubbed Ramesh,Chaturvedi said if he has “admired the personality,persona and his abilities as an administrator,then he should step down from the union council of ministers on moral grounds and join Modi’s party”.

He,however,qualified his statement by saying that he has not seen what Ramesh has said.

“I have not seen what he has said. I am told that he has lavished praise on Modi. If he has done so,then he should immediately quit the union council of ministers and join Modi’s party,” he told The Indian Express.