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BJP, Congress trade charges of poll malpractice

The Bharatiya Janata Party today accused Congress workers of booth-capturing and other election-related excesses at about a dozen places and sent over 80 fax messages to the police and the Election Commission in this regard.

The Congress also charged the BJP with booth-capturing and said they had demanded police protection for people living in hutment colonies of New Delhi following the case of food poisoning in Gautam Nagar.

A Congress spokesperson said they had urged the Delhi police commissioner to take precautionary measures in other such colonies too. He said Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Delhi Congress unit president Shiela Dixit had visited the affected areas.

Delhi BJP vhief Mange Ram Garg said the Congress had again resorted to ''dirty politics'' after creating ''a fake salt shortage and getting mustard oil adulterated''. He said the Congress should have investigated the matter properly before blaming others. He said the incident showed there was a conspiracy to postpone elections in the constituency as Chief Minister Sushma Swaraj was contesting from there.

A BJP spokesperson alleged that Congress workers had captured booths at Chandrawal Nagar in Subzi Mandi area and in Rajinder Nagar. At several other places, including Palam, Vasant Vihar, Delhi Cantonment, Model Town, Badarpur and Sarita Vihar, Congress workers had tried to create disturbances, he alleged.

The spokesperson said the police took no action and even seemed to working with the Congress workers. BJP election campaign committee chairman Vijay Kumar Malhotra said several incidents of bogus voting had also come to their notice and the police had acted reluctantly on them. He said several violations of the election code by Congress candidates had also been reported, and that a bundle of 200 ballot papers was recovered from the Palam area.

UNI

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