One face for me, another for media: Mistry slams Tharoor

New Delhi: Congress central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry on Thursday accused Shashi Tharoor's team of having two faces -- one for the party's poll body and another for the media -- as he rejected allegations of irregularities during the just-concluded AICC presidential poll, according to sources.

In his response to Team Tharoor's letter in which "extremely serious irregularities" were flagged in the conduct of the election in Uttar Pradesh, Mistry said the poll body satisfied the candidate on every complaint but despite that he raised all those points in the media before bringing them to "our notice". "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 Tharoor's chief election agent Salman Soz, according to sources. The campaign team of Tharoor, who lost the party's presidential polls to Mallikarjun Kharge, had written to Mistry a day before the counting of votes, flagging "extremely serious irregularities" in the conduct of the election in Uttar Pradesh. Besides demanding that all votes from Uttar Pradesh be deemed invalid, Tharoor's campaign team had also separately raised "serious issues" in the conduct of the election in Punjab and Telangana.

In his letter to Mistry, Soz had said the facts are "damning" and the election process in Uttar Pradesh is "devoid of credibility and integrity". In his response to Team Tharoor, Mistry said, "You say in your letter that 'we kept quiet in the party's interest and we saw unjust and unfair treatment that prevented us from operating on a level playing field'. We satisfied you on every complaint you made to us and you agreed to all of them and expressed that you're satisfied, despite that you raised all those points in the media before bringing them to our notice. You tried creating a mountain out of a mole by creating an impression that the entire exercise was unfair to your candidate," he said.

To put the record the straight, Mistry said he must state that the party's poll body showed Tharoor's team the list of all the voters two days before the candidates filed their nomination.