ECI failed to be impartial during campaign: Congress

With Lok Sabha elections coming to a close on Saturday, the Congress leadership on Friday targeted the Election Commission of India, charging it with failing to discharge its duties in an impartial manner during the campaign period. AICC said it filed 117 complaints with ECI against BJP leaders, including 14 against the prime minister, for alleged violations of the model code of conduct and the Representation of the People Act but most of them evoked no action from the poll body.

"We respect ECI, but sadly, impartiality was not seen during the course of campaign," said AICC communication in-charge Jairam Ramesh at a presser. He questioned the rationale of ECI making this election process a 44-day marathon and pointed out that the general elections had been completed within just 20 days in the past. He said the PM didn't answer any of the questions AICC media department had asked during the course of the campaign.

While the Congress leadership expressed confidence in the party and INDIA bloc allies winning the election, party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, who has been facing questions as to whether he would be the bloc's prime ministerial candidates in the event of its victory, on Thursday played it safe by saying that his personal choice for the post would be Rahul Gandhi. "Rahul Gandhi is my choice to be prime minister... He is my choice and he represents the youth, and length and breadth of the country," he told a TV channel. However, the official stand of the party and the INDIA bloc is that their PM candidate would be chosen through consensus after the polls.


Ramesh, flanked by his colleagues Pawan Khera and Supriya Shrinate, also said the Congress focussed its entire campaign on a positive agenda based on the party's five sets of pre-poll guarantees to the people. They said never had the party's campaign breached any limits of political decency. They said the party's social media campaign evoked a very successful response.