Election 2019 LIVE: The Election Commission has disposed off a complaint against PM Modi over ‘Bhrashtachari No 1’ remark against Rajiv Gandhi, saying that prima facie, it did not “figure out any literal violation of MCC”. The development comes hours after Congress MP Sushmita Dev filed a complaint in the Supreme Court against Modi’s remark and the poll panel for its “arbitrary and opaque” clean chits to him.
Hours after Priyanka Gandhi Vadra called PM Modi Duryodhana, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee repeated the jibe and said that “Duryodhan-Dushashan (Modi-Shah) duo running the show at Centre”.
Congress MP Sushmita Dev has filed an additional affidavit before the SC stating that “the respondent ECI failed to appreciate that the hate speeches delivered by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are ‘corrupt practices’ under Section 123A of the Representation of People Act, 1951”.
Hours after Priyanka Gandhi Vadra called PM Modi Duryodhana, BJP chief Amit Shah hit out at her during a rally and said that “will know on May 23 (day of counting) who is Duryodhana and who’s Arjun”.
East Delhi Returning Officer has issued a notice to Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia for tweet on AAP’s East Delhi Candidate Atishi’s religion. Stating that the post was a poll code violation, the election panel has asked him to furnish a reply on the matter by 5 pm tomorrow.
Congress’ eastern UP in-charge Priyanka Gandhi Vadra today hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for attacking “martyred” members of her family, saying like Duryodhan, he would be defeated because of his ego.
Her brother and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, who was in Jharkhand, also launched an attack against the Prime Minister, accusing him of favouring industrialists.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court today junked the review petition filed by 21 opposition parties seeking a direction to increase VVPAT verification from five to at least 50 per cent of EVMs during counting of votes in the general elections 2019.
The apex court had on April 8 directed the Election Commission to increase random matching of VVPAT slips with EVMs in five polling booths per assembly segment from one booth. Opposition leaders led by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu have sought the review of the apex court’s order, saying the “increase from 1 to 5 is not a reasonable number and does not lead to satisfaction desired by this court”.
The opposition’s plea wants verification to be hiked to 50 percent of EVMs per assembly segment. The earlier order was seen as a major setback for the opposition parties as the court has merely increased the quantum of EVM verification using paper trail by 1.99 per cent, that is, out of total 10.35 lakh EVMs, only 20,625 will be used in counting to verify results.
As per apex court’s direction, the VVPAT slips of five EVMs in every place will be subjected to physical counting. The court noted that increasing the VVPAT would neither require additional manpower nor delay the results of the Lok Sabha elections.
During the hearing, the bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi asked the poll panel several question regarding the information mentioned on the slips and the process in place to authenticate the genuineness of these paper slips.
The court had noted that the EC had put a query before the Indian Statistical Institute regarding a reasonable sample size to verify the EVMs. The institute had responded that a sample of 479 EVMs would generate 99.99 per cent accuracy in results. The opposition parties had demanded raising the number of EVM machines to 5.17 lakh.
In other news, actors Swara Bhaskar and Gul Panag campaigned for the Aam Aadmi Party today. While Bhaskar will campaign for East Delhi candidate Atishi with a bike rally, Panag would be campaigning for South Delhi candidate Raghav Chadha. In the past two days, actor-turned-politician Prakash Raj and Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani had also joined the AAP campaigning.
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