Jairam Ramesh. Photo courtesy Facebook
New Delhi: The Election Commission of India today asked Congress Member of Parliament Jairam Ramesh to furnish details of 150 District Magistrates who he had alleged that Home Minister Amit Shah had called and spoken to intimidate the officers before the scheduled counting of votes on June 4, 2024.
Ramesh had posted his allegation on his social media handle X on June 1, 2024. In his post, he stated, “The outgoing Home Minister has been calling up DMs/ Collectors. So far, he has spoken to 150 of them. This is blatant and brazen intimidation, showing how desperate the BJP is. Let it be very clear: the will of the people shall prevail, and on June 4th, Mr. Modi, Mr. Shah, and the BJP will exit, and the INDIA Janbandhan will be victorious. Officers should not get under any pressure and must uphold the Constitution. They are under watch.”
In a letter to Ramesh today, which was signed by Suman Kumar Das, Secretary, Election Commission of India, the latter wrote to the Congress leader, that he “being a responsible, experienced and very senior leader of a National Party must have made such public statement, just before the day of counting, based on facts/ information you believe to be true”, and asked Ramesh to share details of those 150 DMs along with the factual matrix/ basis of his information by 19.00 hours today i.e. June 2, 2024, “so that appropriate action can be taken”.
The ECI pointed out that during the period of enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct, all officers are under deemed deputation of the Commission and report directly to the Commission for any directions. “However, no DM has reported any such undue influence as alleged by you,” the letter stated. It added: “As you are aware, the process of counting of votes is a sacred duty cast upon every Returning Officer and such public statements by you tend to put an element of doubt and thus, deserves to be addressed in the larger public interest.”
Ramesh, meanwhile, hit back at the Election Commission, saying that he will reply to the ECI notice but the latter needs to prove its impartiality through its action. “Election Commission is a Constitutional body and I respect it but the Commission must work in an impartial manner. We lodged 117 complaints in the last 77 days out of which 14 complaints were against the Prime Minister for violating the model code of conduct, Supreme Court order and Representation of People’s Act, 1951. But the Commission has not acted on these complaints and I get the notice. We complain against the Prime Minister but the notice goes to [Bharatiya Janata Party president] JP Nadda…” he claimed.
– global bihari bureau
