NEW DELHI: As EC stuck to its insistence on Congress' Rahul Gandhi furnishing a signed declaration to the chief electoral officers of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Haryana, affirming his 'massive voter fraud' allegations, a commission official said the only other option for him, if he fails to do so, is to "apologise to the nation for raising absurd allegations against EC".
"If Rahul does not sign the declaration, it would mean he does not believe in his analysis and resultant conclusions, and is making baseless allegations," said an EC functionary. The three CEOs had expected him to submit the documents along with the declaration on Thursday itself but are still waiting. During a meeting with Karnataka PCC chief DK Shivakumar on Friday, the state CEO sought a similar declaration from him.
Justifying the condition placed on Rahul to submit details of the alleged roll irregularities under oath, before it initiates further proceedings, the EC officer explained: "Rahul has never signed any complaint made to EC. Whatever reply the commission has been giving is to some other entity from AICC, giving him scope to disown it later".
EC on Friday also rejected Rahul's fresh charge on non-functioning of EC website. "It's functioning seamlessly since its launch," it said and added that e-roll for all states can be downloaded from the website.
Another EC functionary pointed out that Rahul had, at his press conference, repeated a "tired" script. On his demand that EC share the electoral roll in a "machine-readable format", the officer cited SC's rejection of a similar prayer by Congress' Kamal Nath in 2018.
"In 2018, they tried to mislead SC by producing documents from a private website to demonstrate that the roll showed the same face for 36 voters. In reality, the defects were rectified four months before that and a copy of the corrected roll was supplied to the party. This was made a ground to seek rolls in a searchable PDF format, which was turned down by court," an EC officer said and added that Rahul's raising the issue again shows he has no respect for SC's decisions. The official said Rahul and his aides are trying to mislead people by claiming that the same electors are registered at different places.
"If Rahul does not sign the declaration, it would mean he does not believe in his analysis and resultant conclusions, and is making baseless allegations," said an EC functionary. The three CEOs had expected him to submit the documents along with the declaration on Thursday itself but are still waiting. During a meeting with Karnataka PCC chief DK Shivakumar on Friday, the state CEO sought a similar declaration from him.
Justifying the condition placed on Rahul to submit details of the alleged roll irregularities under oath, before it initiates further proceedings, the EC officer explained: "Rahul has never signed any complaint made to EC. Whatever reply the commission has been giving is to some other entity from AICC, giving him scope to disown it later".
EC on Friday also rejected Rahul's fresh charge on non-functioning of EC website. "It's functioning seamlessly since its launch," it said and added that e-roll for all states can be downloaded from the website.
Another EC functionary pointed out that Rahul had, at his press conference, repeated a "tired" script. On his demand that EC share the electoral roll in a "machine-readable format", the officer cited SC's rejection of a similar prayer by Congress' Kamal Nath in 2018.
"In 2018, they tried to mislead SC by producing documents from a private website to demonstrate that the roll showed the same face for 36 voters. In reality, the defects were rectified four months before that and a copy of the corrected roll was supplied to the party. This was made a ground to seek rolls in a searchable PDF format, which was turned down by court," an EC officer said and added that Rahul's raising the issue again shows he has no respect for SC's decisions. The official said Rahul and his aides are trying to mislead people by claiming that the same electors are registered at different places.
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