Union Minister Smriti Irani on Monday alleged that the Congress workers were capturing booths and forcing voters to cast their vote for the Congress.
Irani tweeted a video of a woman who claimed that she was made to vote for the Congress. The woman said that one of the officials forcibly put her finger on the Congress button.
“Alert @ECISVEEP Congress President @RahulGandhi ensuring booth capturing,” her tweet said.
She told reporters that Rahul Gandhi was now resorting to stealing votes. “They said that ‘chowkidar chor hai’, but they are the ones who are stealing votes. Rahul Gandhi will have to answer for such acts and the administration must look into the matter,” she said.
Alert @ECISVEEP Congress President @RahulGandhi ensuring booth capturing. https://t.co/KbAgGOrRhI
— Chowkidar Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) May 6, 2019
Her supporters said that they would soon lodge a formal complaint with the returning officer in this regard.
Smriti Irani is the BJP candidate in Amethi and is contesting against Congress President Rahul Gandhi. The two are locked in a fierce battle.
Gandhi is seeking a re-election from Amethi against Irani, who lost the 2014 polls by just over a lakh votes.
Read | Lok Sabha Elections 2019 Phase 5 Live Updates
In Uttar Pradesh, 14 seats are voting today in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha polls.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is contesting on five of the 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh. These are Dhaurahra, Sitapur, Mohanlalganj, Fatehpur and Kaisarganj. Its ally Samajwadi Party (SP) is fighting on seven seats — Lucknow, Banda,
Kaushambi, Barabanki, Faizabad, Bahraich and Gonda. In Amethi and Rae Bareli, the SP-BSP alliance has not put up any candidate, leaving the two constituencies for the Congress.
In 2014, the ruling BJP and its allies had swept 40 of the 51 seats going to polls today. And this makes it a high-stakes battle for the saffron party.
On the other hand, the Congress had won only two of these seats in 2014. And the seats were Rahul Gandhi’s Amethi and Sonia Gandhi’s Rae Bareli.
(With inputs from IANS)