Tea shop where PM Modi worked as a child to get face-lift
It will probably be the only tea stall in the country to be ensconced in a glass case and showcased as a tourist destination. On a tour to Gujarat early this week, Union Tourism Minister Prahlad Patel visited the tea shop, located at one of the platforms of the Vadnagar railway station, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly sold tea as a child. Patel’s ministry now wants to showcase it as an important tourist spot of the city. Grapevine has it that while taking a round of the shop, which is empty now, Patel said a glass cover will be given to the structure to preserve it. In fact, Patel is not the first tourism minister to direct his officials to chalk out a plan to showcase the tea shop as a tourist destination. His predecessor Mahesh Sharma had in 2017 also announced that the tea stall would be turned into a tourist spot. But not much had happened on the ground despite the fact that the tourism ministry had given Rs 8 crore to upgrade the Vadodara railway station. Sharma also got dropped as a minister in Modi government’s second term. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has on numerous platforms, even before he came to power in 2014, spoken at length about his humble past as a tea seller at the station.
The ‘recent’ Lord Ganesha devotee always in town for Chaturthi
Union Home Minister and BJP president Amit Shah appears to be a big devotee of Lord Ganesha. Every year, for the past five years, Shah makes it a point to be in Mumbai on the day of Ganesh Chaturthi, the first day of the 10-day festival, to go pandal-hopping. It’s not known whether he was always a Ganesha devotee but he definitely started visiting Mumbai for the pujas after the BJP came to power in Maharashtra in 2014. He always visits the landmark Lalbagcha Raja, one of the most famous Ganpati pandals in Mumbai, and another in Bandra, headed by the BJP’s former Mumbai president Ashish Shelar. During his visit this year, Shah also visited the famous Siddhivinayak Temple in Dadar and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ official residence, Varsha, Monday to offer his prayers. In the five years that Shah has been visiting Mumbai for Ganesh Chaturthi, the BJP president holds meetings with party leaders but has always given Matoshree, the residence of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, a miss.
Rahul down, aides still ‘fired up’
Rahul Gandhi might have stepped down as Congress president taking responsibility, though only grudgingly, for the party’s electoral drubbings, but his close aides remain all ‘fired up’. Sandeep Singh, a Gandhi aide deputed to assist Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, manhandling a TV reporter in full public glare in Uttar Pradesh last month triggered a big controversy but it hasn’t deterred Team Rahul from intimidating others. Nikhil Alva, another Gandhi lieutenant, continues to send abusive text messages to journalists whenever he thinks their reports are not very flattering to the party. About a week after Lok Sabha results were out in May, one of the aides unwittingly used Rahul’s Twitter handle to send an angry message to a woman TV anchor late in the night. “I am bored with your biased and inaccurate reporting… last week’s (CWC) meeting seems to have got you excited and the source of your gossip…,” the tweet said, before being deleted within a few minutes after some sober Congressmen sounded an alert. Many Congress leaders have also been at the receiving end of Team Rahul’s ‘brusque’ and ‘arrogant’ behaviour but they prefer to bear it silently.
(Contributors: Moushumi Das Gupta and Manasi Phadke)
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