Talking to the media at the airport here Friday Gehlot said “In the observation yesterday the apex court’s intent was to flag such distribution of money amidst poll process and not for welfare centric initiatives for the poor and weaker sections”.
File Photo: IANS
Former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot yet again condemned the BJP government at the Centre and in Bihar for disbursing money amid electioneering, that too on the eve of the polling, in the last assembly elections and observed that the Supreme Court in its reference on freebies on Thursday meant to flag such transactions.
Talking to the media at the airport here Friday Gehlot said “In the observation yesterday the apex court’s intent was to flag such distribution of money amidst poll process and not for welfare centric initiatives for the poor and weaker sections”.
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All had witnessed in recent assembly polls in Bihar, how the money was disbursed two days before the polling, they did so prior to the voting in every phase of polling, despite this, the Election Commission of India did not act, remaining a mute spectator.
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Contrary to this, on one occasion some years back, when elections were being held in Tamil Nadu under the then chief election commissioner T N Seshan, some party or politician had distributed clothes to the needy during campaigning. The Seshan-led ECI had immediately swung into action and postponed the elections. “Now, they (the ruling dispensations and the ECI) opted to sit as mute spectators. This is an anti democratic and worrisome act, in this way they are weakening the democracy”, the senior Congress leader said.
The apex court’s bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi yesterday flagged the growing trend of freebies across states and warned that indiscriminate distribution of such benefits could hamper economic development and strain state finances. “Many states already face revenue deficits yet continue to announce large-scale free schemes”, the judges observed.
In a media chat here on Friday, the three-time CM has also condemned the Bhajan Lal Sharma led BJP government in Rajasthan for deferring the elections to the urban local bodies and the panchayati raj institutions in the state for long.
As per the Constitution Amendment effected by the erstwhile Rajiv Gandhi- led government at the Centre, elections to these local rural and urban bodies are supposed to be held, mandatorily, by the stipulated deadline(term). In the present context the court has also asked the state to at least hold the polls, however, the state government is deferring them on one pretense or the other.
“The Congress will surely win in these polls”, he asserted.
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