The Congress just does not seem to learn. Mani Shankar Aiyyar was one of the first Congress leaders to use the “chaiwala” jibe in a derogatory fashion against then PM aspirant Narendra Modi. Today, Modi is the PM and Aiyyar is in semi-retirement.
More recently, @yuvadesh, the official handle of the Indian Youth Congress’s online magazine, decided to tweet a meme which involved PM Modi. The characters in the meme condescendingly told Modi to “go sell tea”. There was huge uproar and BJP leaders made a big issue out of it, even going to the extent of distributing chai as a sign of protest, outside Congress headquarters in Surat, milking the issue to its fullest.
Now, a new set of Congress leaders have decided to stoke the chaiwala fire again. J & K Congress leader Salman Nizami, tweeted out some “facts”, which he believed punctured the entire claim that Modi had ever sold tea at the Vadnagar railway station:
Modi was born in 1950.
Modi left home in 1971.Vadnagar Railway station established in 1973.
Which year Modi sold tea here? #शाह_काल
— Salman Nizami (@SalmanNizami_) December 3, 2017
The allegation was, how could Modi sell tea at a railway station, which was built after Modi left home. National Spokesperson of the Congress, Khusboo, added her comment to the above claim, stating sarcastically that Modi might have been selling tea in his dreams:
Sapne mein bech rahe the. https://t.co/cEkPRR8Y6i
— khushbusundar (@khushsundar) December 3, 2017
Soon the copy-paste factory started, with the same tweets being repeated by Congress supporting handles:
Modi was born in 1950.
Modi left home in 1971.Vadnagar Railway station established in 1973.
Which year Modi sold tea here? #शाह_काल
— Shyamlal Jokchand (@ShyamJokchand) December 3, 2017
Modi was born in 1950.
Modi left home in 1971.Vadnagar Railway station established in 1973.
Which year Modi sold tea there? #feku
— kousik chakrabortty (@i_kousik) December 3, 2017
So had Nizami stumbled upon a hitherto unknown fact which debunks Modi’s claims of being a “chaiwala”? Firstly, this was not a new claim, but an oft repeated once, including by disgraced, bigoted cop Sanjiv Bhatt:
1950: Feku born in Vadnagar
1970: Feku leaves home and wife
1973: First bimonthly train to Vadnagar Station
When and where did he sell tea?— Sanjiv Bhatt (IPS) (@sanjivbhatt) October 9, 2017
Secondly, the claim was fake. Twitter user Anuj Gupta countered the claims of Nizami, by producing evidence that the station at Vadnagar was in fact in existence from 1887:
Vadnagar station was built in 1887https://t.co/IbZTL4e1FE pic.twitter.com/wnu5sE9JQq
— Anuj Gupta (@anujg) December 3, 2017
Gupta, for that matter, is no ordinary twitter user. He is the OSD to the Railways Minister Piyush Goyal. His claim too checked out, as he himself provided the link to the Western Railways site, from where one could download the document stating the opening dates from ‘History of Indian Railways’. In the said document, it was clearly mentioned that a line existed between Mehsana and Vadnagar right from 1887.
And just like that, another lie of the Congress spread on social media is punctured. However, till the time of publishing this article, Nizami had not deleted his tweet.
