A BJP ally on Sunday let slip purported dates for the announcement of the schedule for the general election, information that should not be available to anyone other than the Election Commission which is an autonomous authority.
Pashupati Kumar Paras, the Bihar chief of Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party, was addressing a joint news conference of the ruling alliance partners where they announced a rally in Patna that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would attend.
“We are organising this rally on March 3 because the elections will be notified (by the Election Commission) sometime between March 6 and 10,” Paras, who is a minister in the state, said.
Knowing the date in advance can help a ruling dispensation time its election sops, because the poll notification (the announcement of the election schedule) brings into force the model code of conduct that prohibits the announcement or inauguration of new projects or schemes.
NDA sources said the rally would be part of a series Modi would be addressing across the country ahead of the poll notification to launch and inaugurate a raft of projects.
Paras’s apparent slip-up revived memories of the “collusion” charges hurled at the Election Commission in October 2017 when it delayed the poll schedule for Gujarat while announcing it for Himachal Pradesh. Modi used the extra fortnight to inaugurate several projects in Gujarat while the state government announced a slew of sops.
Faced with reporters’ questions, then chief election commissioner and former Gujarat chief secretary A.K. Joti had said there was no “mili bhagat (collusion)” and claimed the Gujarat government had sought the window to provide flood relief.
At Sunday’s news conference, Paras was evasive when asked how he had come to know of the purported dates.
“I have no specific information. I’m saying this on the basis of media reports,” he said. “Also, in 2014, the elections were notified in March and so this time too they should be notified around the same dates.”
On January 19, the news agency PTI had quoted sources as saying the poll notification was likely in the first week of March but an Election Commission spokesperson had then clarified that “no decision has been taken”.
Contacted by The Telegraph later and asked where exactly he had come across the dates, Paras said: “I don’t remember exactly but I read somewhere in Delhi that the elections will possibly be notified in March.” He did not explain his reference to the specific dates.
Paras’s remark came on a day Modi saluted the Election Commission for “strengthening our democracy” at a time the panel has slammed as “motivated slugfest” the Opposition’s claim that voting machines are being rigged and refused its demand to revert to paper ballots.
In his monthly radio broadcast Mann Ki Baat, the Prime Minister said the commission’s efforts to include the last voter in the farthest corner “are bound to instil a sense of pride”.
