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Journalism of Courage
INDIA bloc allies — the Congress and the Samajwadi Party — are leaving no opportunity to showcase their bonhomie in public. On Tuesday, the Congress organised an iftar party at its Lucknow headquarters in the presence of party national general secretary in-charge Avinash Pande.
Among the guests at the event were some state SP leaders, who accepted the Congress’s invitation and participated in the feast. This is the second consecutive year when the SP has not organised its own iftar party. The reason cited by the party was that all its senior leaders were busy in the Lok Sabha election campaign.
Last year, the iftar could not be organised at the SP office as the road opposite the premises was being repaired.
South Mission
Its focus on its ‘south mission’, the BJP wants to step up electioneering in Andhra Pradesh where the party has teamed up with TDP and Jana Sena Party for both Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.
The BJP is holding a two-day coordination meeting in all the 25 Lok Sabha constituencies of the state. This will be followed by similar meetings at the Assembly constituencies and then at the booth level.
According to BJP leaders, the coordination meeting is required for the party to work closely with the TDP and Jana Sena units, as each of the six Lok Sabha constituencies where the BJP candidates are fighting, Assembly seats are strategically distributed between the three parties so that every candidate gets the benefits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity as well as the ground network of the allies.
Once the meetings are over, the BJP will be fit enough to launch an aggressive campaign in Andhra Pradesh, the party leaders said.
Poll Fact-Check
Hours after the Election Commission on Tuesday launched its ‘Myth Vs Reality’ register to fact-check claims about elections, the EC social media team was on the job.
A post on X claimed that the EC had made Aadhaar mandatory for voters, to which the poll panel replied that submission of Aadhaar was voluntary.
The EC posted the link to its fact-checking microsite, where the issue had already been addressed. It is learnt that the EC’s internal social media team is monitoring misinformation regarding EVMs, conduct of elections and other poll-related issues to fact-check them in real-time.
Chief Electoral Officers and District Election Officers in states have also been asked to quickly react to such claims.
