Gehlot questions EC's impartiality, accuses poll panel of bias (Ld)

Jaipur, Aug 8 (IANS) Former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, backing Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, has raised serious concerns over the neutrality of the Election Commission, alleging that its conduct has changed ever since a Union Minister was included in the committee for selecting the Chief Election Commissioner.

Gehlot said the credibility of the Commission was once so high that other countries sought its expertise to conduct their elections.

“Today, the people of India are looking at the Election Commission with suspicion. The BJP has destroyed institutions with its undemocratic behaviour,” he alleged.

According to Gehlot, the removal of the Chief Justice of India from the selection panel and the inclusion of the Union Home Minister have tilted the Commission’s approach.

“For the first time, the Election Commission is discriminating against the opposition. Even in a delegation I was part of, its tone was not right,” he claimed, warning that democracy cannot survive if elections are not fair.

Gehlot said the Commission could have easily provided voter list data in machine-readable format, as demanded by Congress, instead of making it a six-month exercise.

He alleged that fake votes, revealed by Rahul Gandhi before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, seems to be quietly removed by state commissions like those in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka to cover up electoral fraud.

He further pointed out that the official election department websites of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh are currently inaccessible, hinting that “some improvements” may be underway after his statements.

Gehlot concluded that if the Election Commission was working honestly, it would have initiated an impartial investigation into these allegations instead of issuing “baseless clarifications".

Further answering a query on latest film Udaipur Files if it was an agenda-based film, he attacked BJP and said: "Their agenda is the same — and we are not supposed to have any say in it. Their life agenda is the same, Their thinking agenda is the same, their way of working is the same, And their way of implementing it is the same. In short, their agenda is just one."

They have been winning elections by dividing the society however truth will come to fore one day, he added.

--IANS

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