Phase 5 of the Lok Sabha elections in India are underway and one of the most important constituency voting today is that of Amethi where INC president Rahul Gandhi clashes with BJP’s Smriti Irani.
Amethi has long been the stronghold of the Gandhi family and in 2014, Rahul Gandhi, 3 time MP from here, defeated Smriti Irani by over one lakh votes.
In the heat of voting that has commenced there today, Smriti Irani has put allegations of booth capturing in her constituency and took a sharp dig at her Congress opponent Rahul Gandhi regarding this.
The union minister is reported to have said that she has tweeted an alert to administration and EC (alleging booth capturing in Amethi) and hoped for action from them. She also asked the people of the country to decide whether this kind of politics of Rahul Gandhi should be punished or not.
The Congress was quick to refute and said that she was only ‘looking for excuses’.
Dismissing the Amethi’s BJP candidate’s allegation, the Congress said that Smriti Irani was staring at a defeat and so was ‘looking for excuses’. “It now is more than clear that she has lost. Now, she is looking for excuses. If Rahul Gandhi ji is capturing booths, and capturing votes, then what is the election commission doing that has been working in a biased manner in favour of Modi and Amit Shah,” Congress spokesperson Zeeshan Haider said.
Irani earlier tweeted a video of a woman at Gujartola booth in Gauriganj alleging that she was forced to press the button with the hand symbol (of the Congress).
Smriti Irani went further on and also did not spare Rahul Gandhi’s sister and general secretary, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. “She did not know my name 5 years back, now she keeps taking my name, such an accomplishment. Nowadays she takes her husband’s name less and my name more,” the BJP’s Amethi candidate is supposed to have said.