BJP used money, threats and 'partisan' returning officer in Haryana: Congress

NEW DELHI: Congress Tuesday said the governing BJP employed "money power, threats and misuse of returning officer" to win the Haryana Rajya Sabha election at any cost, as it slammed the rival for again "exposing its anti-Ambedkar character" by trying to steal the parliament membership of grassroots Dalit activist Karamvir Boudh.

After scraping a victory in the Haryana Rajya Sabha polls, despite cross voting by five Congress MLAs and four of its votes declared invalid, Congress MP Deepender Hooda said BJP had appointed Gujarat deputy CM as the observer for the polls which showed that the BJP leadership wanted to win the election irrespective of the tactic used.

"BJP tried to murder democracy in the dark of night. All the four votes declared as invalid were completely valid. They had even been put in the tray of valid votes by an official. But this was done by a blatantly partisan RO (returning officer) to contrive the numbers in favour of BJP," he told a press conference with Congress's scheduled castes department chairman Rajendra Pal Gautam.




Deepender said Congress will take strong action against the MLAs who cross voted and betrayed the party, adding that people will not forgive the legislators who betrayed their mandate.

He said BJP wanted to engineer cross-voting by nine or seven Congress legislators while securing two votes of INLD. He said INLD, "which is the B-team of BJP", declared its decision to abstain from polling barely half an hour before the voting ended, because it was sure that Congress was winning the election.

Deepender said when BJP's "game of pressure and money" failed, BJP employed its third strategy of fixing the play through RO. "RO worked as a BJP agent," he added.
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