Rahul alleges malpractice in voting: Maharashtra Cong to ‘reach out to every household to apprise people of wrongdoings’

He said the BJP and the Union government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi are finishing democracy. “Free and fair elections are becoming impossible in the country. We had raised it in the Maharashtra Assembly election when we noticed a big change in voters’ choice compared to three months prior to that during the Lok Sabha elections last year,” he added.

“The malpractices seen during the Maharashtra Assembly elections were also witnessed in the Haryana Assembly elections and now it is likely to be repeated in the Bihar elections,” he said.

The EC does what the BJP-led Union government says and the BJP is busy defending the EC for the wrongdoings, said Chennithala. “The state Congress will reach out to every household on the issue of malpractices in elections. We will do a signature campaign and tell the public about vote cheating,” he said.

The Congress leader said the Mahayuti government is postponing local body elections deliberately so as to use funds of civic bodies to manage its finances as the government is facing a serious financial crisis due to its wrong schemes.

The Congress has not taken any decision on a pre-poll alliance for the forthcoming civic polls, he said, adding the party leaders are still discussing it.

Chennithala said the closeness of two cousins MNS chief Raj Thackeray and Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray was not a cause of concern for the Congress. “MNS is not in our alliance. We don’t know anything about the MNS and Sena (UBT) alliance, so we cannot comment on it. We don’t have any issues if cousins are coming close but the alliance of their parties will be a political issue. We will discuss if it actually happens,” he said.

State Congress chief Harshvardhan Sapkal said BJP rule in the country is destroying democracy and the party has chalked out a six-month programme to protest against it. “The BJP always talks of a Congress-free country but 40 per cent of its leaders are imported from the Congress,” he said.