The Communist Party of India (Marxist) leadership has criticised Minister of State for Home Mullappally Ramachandran over his allegation that several bogus votes had been cast in favour of his rival candidate in the Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency during the election.
“The argument surfaced recently as part of the continuing attempts by the United Democratic Front (UDF) leaders to justify an imminent defeat. No one, other than Mr. Ramachandran, had raised such an allegation during the time of polling or days after the polling,” said senior CPI (M) leader M.V. Jayarajan.
In a communication here, Mr. Jayarajan, who was also the LDF election convener in Vadakara, said “Mr. Ramachandran had made similar remarks whenever he was afraid of facing defeat in the elections.”
According to Mr. Jayarajan, the election commission had convened a meeting on April 11 to discuss the complaints, but Mr. Ramachandran or his election agent did not attend the meeting. The UDF was actually skipping it as it had not filed any complaint about the issue to the booth-level officers concerned.
“Voting was interrupted in some booths as the electronic voting machines developed snag, but there were no attempts of bogus voting as propagated by the UDF,” he said.
