A day after Congress central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry’s scathing letter to party leader Shashi Tharoor over the just-concluded AICC presidential poll, latter’s chief election agent Salman Soz said that they would not respond to any letter “that was leaked to the media” before they even had a “chance to read it”.
Mistry on Thursday rubbished Tharoor team’s allegations of irregularities during the Congress presidential poll, and accused them of having two faces — one for the party’s poll body and another for the media.
“I am sorry to say that you had one face before me which communicated that you’re satisfied with all our answers and action and different face in the media which made all these allegations against us,” Mistry said in his letter to Soz, according to sources.
The campaign team of Tharoor, who lost the party’s chief polls to Mallikarjun Kharge, had written to Mistry a day before the counting of votes, raising “extremely serious irregularities” in the conduct of the election in Uttar Pradesh.
Taking to Twitter, Soz said that he would not comment on any letter addressed to him that was leaked to the media before they had a chance to read it. “We are moving on,” he said.
“I will not respond to or comment on any letter addressed to me that was leaked to the media before I even had a chance to read it. We are moving on. All 1072 of us. Our conduct dignified, our heads held high,” he said, referring to the Mistry’s letter.
In another tweet, Soz also said that the letter written to Mistry a day before the Congress chief poll result was not leaked by anyone from their campaign team.
“I can confirm 100% that the letter from our campaign to the Chief Election Authority was not leaked by anyone from our team. Dr @ShashiTharoor would never allow such a letter to be leaked. Just setting the record straight,” he added.
Earlier, Tharoor had also said that the leak of that letter was unfortunate, “it is certainly not something we would have done, getting some very educated guesses where it came from”.
“It was unfortunate that a strictly internal letter to the CEA was leaked to the media. I hope this clarification by Salman Soz ends an unnecessary controversy. This election was meant to strengthen @INCIndia, not to divide it. Let’s move on,” Tharoor had tweeted after his team’s letter dated October 18 came in public domain.
