Man sends Kejriwal Rs364 to buy ‘decent shoes’

A Vishakhapatnam-based businessman, purportedly embarrassed by Delhi Chief Miniser Arvind Kejriwal's dress sense, has sent him a demand draft for Rs364, requesting him to buy a ''decent pair of shoes'' and not attend important functions wearing sandals.

Sumit Agrawal, a mechanical engineer, posted an open letter on Facebook saying that he read a report saying that Kejriwal met French President François Hollande at Rashtrapati Bhavan wearing sandals.

''It broke my heart to see you like this. I'm deeply aggrieved. It's sad that the Delhi government does not even provide proper footwear to its employees whereas even micro scale industries (such as mine), with their lifetime budgets far lesser than Delhi government's daily budget, provide boots to their labourers free of cost,'' he wrote.

And why the precise amount of Rs364? Agrawal gives a reason - because he is against donations to political parties, he did not send it from his own pocket. ''I took to the streets to gather money to fund a pair of footwear for you. Due to time constraints, I could only go to every flat in my own & 2 adjacent buildings.''

Agarwal believes in ''certain protocol'', which is to follow a certain dress code for a formal event, which in Agarwal's opinion means closed shoes need to be worn and the CM should have adhered to a more formal dress code for the event.

It's hardly news that the CM has always portrayed himself as an 'aam admi' who is extremely down to earth and defies conventions of being a politician. But this open letter has gone viral. Whether the CM's footwear is a matter of ''shame'' or national concern can be debated; so can the idea whether wearing Indian sandals to a formal event should be called out or not, but in the meanwhile it seems Kejriwal's style statement is as much a topic of conversation as his bete noire Prime Minister Narendra Modi's supposedly impeccable dress sense.