Sunny Deol, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate for Punjab’s Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat, was on Saturday, served a notice by the Election Commission (EC) for allegedly violating the model code of conduct (MCC).
A notice was served for holding a public meeting in Pathankot town after the campaigning came to an end at 5 pm on Friday, an election official told IANS at Chandigarh, adding that Deol used a microphone to address the public.
The actor-turned-politician is pitted against state Congress President Sunil Jakhar. Gurdaspur was represented four times by actor Vinod Khanna of the BJP who died in April 2017 due to cancer.
Earlier, Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh had dismissed any threat to Sunil Jakhar from Sunny Deol. He had said that Sunny Deol was fighting the elections under pressure from BJP as he owed several crores of rupees to different banks.
Jakhar had also taken a dig at Deol, saying while he might be expert at singing and dancing around and pulling pumps out of the soil, he did not know anything about Gurdaspur or the problems of its people.
Gurdaspur constituency, with nine Assembly constituencies, has 14,68,972 voters, including 72,6363 women voters.
Sunny Deol, who is the son of veteran actor Dharmendra, had joined the BJP on April 23 in the presence of Union Ministers Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman.
Dharmendra represented Bikaner constituency in Rajasthan as BJP Member of Parliament of the 14th Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.
Punjab will vote in a single phase, on Sunday, the last day of the seven-phased national election.
(With IANS inputs)