Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday urged the Election Commission to release funds for virtual campaigning to political parties that do not have “digital infrastructure to compete”. BJP,
CEC Sushil Chandra on Saturday said the ban on rallies, road shows and other such physical means of publicity will be reviewed on January 15.
Asked whether parties are ready to contest elections digitally, Akhilesh told the media in Lucknow, “I will appeal to the Election Commission to give some funds to the parties so that they can build their infrastructure, because we BJP is.” Can’t compete with the infrastructure of … and the democratic system is on the same platform.”
“If the Election Commission decides to hold virtual rallies, some help should be given to those parties which do not have a strong infrastructure,” he said.
Akhilesh also said that the SP’s legal team will file a police complaint against the “BJP IT cell chief” who tweeted a picture of him with the wrong perfume trader of two Jains that was raided recently.
He said, “The legal team of SP will get the FIR done against the head of BJP IT cell, who is sitting in Delhi and destroying UP from there. BJP teams are working continuously to spread fake news.
Without naming Amit Malviya, the SP chief said, ‘He has uploaded a photo of me and said that the perfume trader who conducted the raid is also standing with me. We will file an FIR against that person.”
BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi said, “Akhilesh Yadav’s anger shows that he is afraid of both the IT department and the BJP’s IT cell. The raids by the IT department have ruined their plan to buy votes with unaccounted money.”
At the press conference, Akhilesh showed a screenshot of Malviya’s tweet posted on Friday, which read, “In May 2015, Akhilesh Yadav took a delegation to Grasse, France. The reason given was to create a perfume park. A photo from the trip shows their perfume friend. He is the same person, behind whose walls and land, public money was found.”
In the picture were some French representatives along with Akhilesh, and SP MLC Pushpraj Jain “Pumpy” and senior party leader Abhishek Mishra.
Last month, the IT department had raided Pushpraj Jain and another perfume trader named Piyush Jain; Over Rs 1.60 crore in cash was recovered from Piyush’s house in Kanpur. While the BJP claims that Piyush is close to the SP, Akhilesh has denied any connection between his party and Piyush.
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