Congress accused the Samajwadi Party government of wide spread use of state machinery to ensure victory of their Party supported candidate in the Panchayat polls.
The Party even asked chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, either to step down taking morale responsibility of failing to ensure free and fair polls or to at least to take up the issue with the Election Commission and get recounting orders in all the districts where disputes occurred.
RsRsThe blatant use of state machinery can be gauged by the fact that in Badaun where Akhilesh Yadav’s kin Dharmendra Yadav is a MP, a Returning Officer for Zila Panchayat polls openly accused Samajwadi Party candidate of beating him up after he was losing to a BJP-supported candidate in the elections”, cited spokesman of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) Siddharth Priya Srivastava while charging government over use of state machinery to ensure victory of their candidates.
Talking to media persons here on Monday evening, Srivastava said that instead of getting the SP candidate arrested in Badaun, the local district magistrate instead stopped the announcement of results. RsRsIn Gazipur district, Virendra Yadav, son of Akhilesh Yadav’s ministerial colleague Kailash Yadav, was trailing far behind but the local administration had stopped counting at mid-night, chased away all the opponents, and suddenly announced victory of Virendra Yadav”, charged Srivastava while further accusing SP of using state machinery. Srivastava said that similar reports poured in from all the districts where government officials openly used their positions to ensure that any of the ruling Party supported candidate would not face defeat.
Srivastava said that SP goons had already made the mockery of the entire democratic system but what is alarming is that the government officials also acted as Samajwadi Party’s RsAgents’, which is not healthy for democracy so Akhilesh Yadav should take morale responsibility of it and quit his post, or he should show courage and get the votes re-counted after shunting out all of the guilty officials.
Srivastava further demanded that the Election Commission should also intervene into the matter and immediately order re-counting of votes in presence of some of it’s observers, particularly in the areas where charges of rigging or unfair counting has been made on the government machinery.