BJD MPS MEET AK JOTI, DEMAND PROBE INTO ‘ELECTION IRREGULARITIES’
New Delhi: A BJD delegation visited the Election Commission (EC) here Thursday to lodge a complaint against Union Minister for Tribal Welfare Jual Oram and alleging that the BJP leader submitted false election returns to the EC during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
The delegation, comprising 18 BJD MPs from both Houses of parliament, met the Chief Election Commissioner AK Joti and Election Commissioners Om Prakash Rawat and Sunil Arora during its visit to the EC office.
After the meeting with the EC officials, BJD spokesman Pratap Keshari Deb told the media, “There are many discrepancies and irregularities in the EC returns filed by Oram during the last Lok Sabha elections. We had raised the matter at a press conference in Bhubaneswar earlier. Today, members of the BJD visited the EC and lodged an official complaint.”
He also said, “We have demanded that the issues relating to election expenditures of Oram also be probed into. Matters that appear to be suspicious include the amount of funds he and his party showed and how much they spent during the polls. We have put before the EC all facts relating to it and the commission has assured us that they would probe into the matter.”
Keshari, however, declined to disclose the magnitude of funds which are reported to be under suspicion, but said that there are irregularities on several fronts. When asked about the timing of the complaint, Deb said, “As soon as the issue came to our notice we took actions accordingly.”
Rajya Sabha MP Dilip Tirkey, who fought the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 against Oram from Sundargarh, was also in the delegation. He told the media that during the 2014 polls, Oram had cited wrong information in his EC returns and the party demands action against the BJP MP following a probe is conducted into the matter as per the law.
The other members of the delegation included Rajya Sabha MPs Pratap Keshari Deb, Dilip Tirkey, Prasanna Acharya and Lok Sabha MPs Tathagata Satpathy, Bhartruhari Mahtab, Kulamani Samal, Prasanna Patsani among others.
PNN
