NEW DELHI, SEPT 20: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samata Party on Monday urged the Election Commission (EC) to take immediate steps to prevent the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and its allies, the Congress and the CPI (M), from rigging the elections in Bihar.In another development, BJP general secretary M Venkaiah Naidu drew the EC's attention to the election observer for Amethi, D K Rao's activities and urged it to recall him.``In his capacity as the observer, he is reported to have called on Priyanka Vadra who is actively campaigning for her mother Sonia Gandhi in Amethi,'' Naidu wrote in a letter to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) M S Gill. ``This conduct is totally unbecoming of an election observer who is expected to distance himself from all political parties and persons involved in an election.''``He is the same IAS officer who was questioned in the Tandoor murder case as an associate of the principal accused,'' BJP spokesperson Arun Jaitley told reporters on Monday.Meanwhile, the BJP and its ally stepped up their pressure on the EC to beef up security measures in Bihar. ``The attempts at institutionalised electoral rigging during the third round of polling are a challenge to India's democratic polity and the conduct of free and fair elections. Laloo Prasad Yadav's RJD, which is an ally of the Congress, has a history of electoral violence, booth-capturing and rigging,'' Jaitley, who was accompanied by his Samata Party counterpart Jaya Jaitly, observed.They also saw nothing wrong in the Bihar Governor writing directly to the Union Home Secretary about the discovery of excess ballot papers from a printing press in Calcutta. ``So gross are the malpractices that even Constitutional authorities have been constrained to speak out their mind,'' Jaitley said.Training their guns at the RJD-Congress-CPI (M) trio, the two spokespersons, cited instances of electoral malpractices in the State. ``First, duplicate ballot boxes were discovered. The Governor of Bihar pointed this out to the CEC. The state's CEO gave an unconvincing reply and the CEC, equally unconvincingly, said the ballot boxes had been wrongly numbered,'' they pointed out.``Again, a huge number of excess ballot papers meant for Bihar constituencies are published in a Calcutta press controlled by the CPI (M). In the past, the the State's CEO has favoured this press with lucrative order, in clear violation of the rules,'' the two leaders said.They also referred to the unprecedented violence and booth-capturing in the first leg of polls in Bihar, and hoped that ``the efforts of this trio to rig the polls will come to a naught and the ballot will prove stronger than the bullets of the criminals on the payroll of the combine.''
