In 2014, he was nominated by Congress party to the Rajya sabha (upper house of the Parliament of India) representing Gujarat State.
Mistry has been a General Secretary of the Congress since 2011, and is considered a close aide of the party's President Rahul Gandhi.
In 1969, Madhusudan Mistry campaigned as a trade unionist for the Praja Socialist Party candidate Brahmkumar Bhatt.
[1] After leaving Oxfam, in 1985, he founded the NGO Developing Initiatives for Social and Human Action (DISHA), with an aim to mobilize the Dalits, forest workers, tribal women and casual labourers in Gujarat.
When the BJP leader Shankersinh Vaghela rebelled and formed Rashtriya Janata Party (RJP), Mistry joined him.
However, several political analysts observed that the Congress victory in Karnataka was a result of the crisis in BJP's state unit and Mistry had spent little time in Kerala.
[9][10] Mistry was the chairman of the screening committee for selection of candidates for the 2013 Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly election, which Congress lost.
Gandhi deployed Mistry as a "one-man mission" to tour the country and gather feedback about the prospective candidates at the grassroots level.