New Delhi [India], August 18 : Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Manoj Jha on Monday slammed the Election Commission, accusing the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar of not addressing the concerns raised by the opposition parties regarding "electoral malpractices".
Jha mocked CEC Gyanesh Kumar's press conference, held yesterday, and said that the top poll body official was acting like a BJP spokesperson.
Addressing the INDIA bloc press conference at the Constitution Club, Manoj Jha said, "What the Election Commissioner said yesterday was not a clarification of our questions. He was presenting someone's intention. Yesterday was chosen because there was a Yatra (referring to Congress' Voter Adhikar Yatra). With the intention of making it a flop, he did not answer even a single journalist's question yesterday. You must not have seen a PC against the Opposition against its own Election Commission before," the RJD leader said.
"We are getting strength from the Constitution of India. I want to tell the CEC that EC is not synonymous with the Constitution, but rather it is born from it. Don't rip it to shreds. This book is a protection and safeguard; it cannot be a shield for your defiance of the Constitutional propriety and morality. Yesterday we were looking for our CEC, but we were unable to find him. We found a new BJP spokesperson," Jha added.
On Sunday, the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar refuted allegations of "vote theft" by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and asked him to either furnish a signed affidavit or apologise to the nation for his remarks.
"An affidavit will have to be given or an apology should be made to the country. Teesra koi vikalp nahi (There is no third option.) If the affidavit is not received within 7 days, it means that all these allegations are baseless," CEC Gyanesh Kumar said while addressing mediapersons at a briefing at the National Media Centre in the national capital.
Rahul Gandhi had on August 7 addressed a press conference in New Delhi, in which he presented Congress's research on voting in the Mahadevapura Assembly in Karnataka, a part of the Bangalore Central parliamentary constituency. Gandhi alleged "vote chori" (vote theft) of 1,00,250 votes, including duplicate voters, invalid addresses, and bulk registrations of votes at single locations.