Guwahati, April 7: Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi today all but questioned the neutrality of the Election Commission over enforcement of the model code of conduct during the Assam Assembly elections.
The first phase of the polls was held on April 4 and the second phase will be on Monday.
Before embarking on a hectic day of campaigning in lower and central Assam, which included two rallies with party president Sonia Gandhi this morning, the 80-year-old chief minister told mediapersons, "I have serious grievances against the Election Commission. It seems to be biased to some extent during its checks."
Elaborating, Gogoi said, "Its flying squads have carried checks on my wife, PCC president Anjan Dutta, cabinet minister Rakibul Hussain but we have not seen similar action being taken against our rivals even though money has been distributed in Jalukbari and in tea gardens of my constituency."
Titabar is Gogoi's constituency while Jalukbari is the constituency of his blue-eyed boy-turned-bete noire Himanta Biswa Sarma, now convener of the BJP's state election management committee.
"Our members and workers are being harassed but our rivals are going scot-free. Am not at all happy with the role played by it (Election Commission)," Gogoi said.
Apart from Gogoi, there has been disquiet in the ruling Congress over the implementation of the model code of conduct regarding hoardings and newspaper advertisements.
PCC publicity committee convener Dhiren Nath said they have written to the election authorities on the two issues, one from the PCC and one from the committee's end.
"After we complained about the removal of hoardings, it was checked to a certain extent. We have also written about newspaper advertisements on April 5 but it has not responded so far," Nath said.
Nath went on to add, "There were lot of restrictions on print advertisement as far as the content was concerned but the same set of restrictions was not seen on ads published by our rivals."
Assam chief electoral officer Vijayendra told The Telegraph this evening, "It will not be appropriate on my part to comment on the chief minister since I have not seen the report or TV footage. We keep on receiving complaints. But whenever anything is reported to us we look into it and appropriate steps are taken."
A senior official in the office of the chief electoral officer said the Election Commission is closely monitoring the situation in Assam through its monitoring cell. "If they find anything amiss in TV footage of campaigning they want an action-taken report within two hours from us. We act as per EC guidelines," he said.
