In a blistering attack on his BJP challenger in the high-stake Lok Sabha poll in Chandigarh, Congress candidate Manish Tewari has said that vote for his BJP challenger Sanjay Tandon will be a vote for Anil Masih who “slaughtered the democracy in Chandigarh by subverting the mayoral polls”.

Interacting with Hindustan Times staffers at Mohali on Wednesday, Tewari raked up for the first time in his campaign the name of the controversial Masih, a BJP functionary who was hauled up by the Supreme Court for manipulating the Chandigarh mayoral poll on January 30 in favour of the party candidate.

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The apex court had severely reprimanded Masih, scrapped the BJP candidate’s appointment as mayor and installed opposition Aam Aadmi Party’s nominee in the Chandigarh municipal corporation’s top post. Masih’s conduct as presiding officer of the mayoral poll had hit the national headlines, much to the embarrassment of the BJP.

“What people of Chandigarh need to keep in mind is that a vote for Sanjay Tandon is a vote for Anil Masih, who murdered democracy. Tandon and Masih are two sides of the same coin,” he said in his sharpest attack yet on his poll rival.

“Had it not been for the Supreme Court’s intervention, democracy would have been dead in Chandigarh,” said the two-time MP from Ludhiana and Anandpur Sahib, charging that “a disgraced Masih continues to campaign for the BJP”.

Tewari repeated his dare to Tandon for an open debate before the June 1 election.

“This is the 17th day that I’ve challenged him to openly debate on any neutral plat- form so that people can decide who is best placed to represent them in the Parliament,” he said, accusing Tandon of being “ insecure” and “hiding behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s persona”.

Rejecting Tandon’s charge of being an outsider as “frog-in-the-well mindset”, Tewari said that “the blood of my family is mingled in the soil of Chandigarh”, alluding to the assassination of his father — Panjab University professor VN Tewari — by terrorists in 1984.

“It has always been my aspiration to represent the place where my late father had made the supreme sacrifice for the unity and integrity of the country,” he said, adding that the decision on his contests in Ludhiana and Anandpur Sahib was made by the party: “So, to return to my janmabhoomi (birthplace), I had work on many karmabhoomis.”

On the absence of senior Congress leader-former MP Pawan Bansal from his campaign, Tewari said he had reached out to him (Bansal) to be present at his nomination on Tuesday.

“There could be a level of personal anguish. But I’m sure that he has the maturity, experience and sagacity to be able to surmount that and be with us in this existential struggle for the soul of this country,” he added.