Rahul Gandhi Launches Strong Criticism Against BJP and EC

Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi strongly criticised the Election Commission’s interim order barring rival Trinamool Congress (TMC) factions from using the party’s name and reserved election symbol in the upcoming West Bengal Assembly bypolls. Gandhi said the responsibility of the Election Commission was to protect the people’s mandate, alleging instead that it was helping forces seeking to undermine it. Amid an internal dispute within the TMC, the poll panel has barred both factions from using the party name and its ‘Flowers and Grass’ symbol for the bypolls.

Rahul Gandhi alleged that a similar pattern had been followed in the cases of Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party, and was now being repeated with the Trinamool Congress. He accused the BJP and the Election Commission of working together to split political parties and subsequently take away their election symbols. Gandhi said that if an entire political party could be “stolen”, questions could also be raised over the protection of voters’ mandates. He described the developments as a sign of what he called democratic decline and said the fight to protect the party was not only Mamata Banerjee’s, but also concerned political parties and voters seeking free and fair elections.