Opposition parties afraid of lodging formal complaints with EC on bogus voters: Prakash Ambedkar
Mumbai.(PTI): Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi leader Prakash Ambedkar on Wednesday hinted that the fear of retribution from the government might be preventing opposition parties from lodging formal complaints with the Election Commission over the alleged discrepancies in electoral rolls.
"It is quite easy to track down which officer added names of people that do not exist, or (submitted) incomplete information. However, the Shiv Sena (UBT) or Raj Thackeray's MNS seems to lack tenacity," Ambedkar told reporters.
He further said that merely crying foul of "vote-chori" won't serve any purpose without pursuing complaints with the poll panel.
The VBA leader claimed opposition parties might be refraining from pursuing the matter (regarding the voters’ roll) because they are afraid that the government might dig out their "past ghosts".
Speaking on the broader ideological battle, Ambedkar alleged that the RSS has still not accepted the Constitution, even after 75 years of its adoption.
Quoting his grandfather, Dr B R Ambedkar, he said Indian society could either follow the path of the Manusmriti or the Constitution, adding that these are two parallel lines that will never meet.
The VBA chief described the hoisting of a saffron flag alongside the national flag at the Ram Temple in Ayodhya as a deliberate act, drawing parallels with a similar incident in Nagpur in 1950.
He alleged the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha were almost identical ideologically and claimed their current stance differed from the "masks they wore in the past".
He claimed the two organisations were part of alliance governments with the Muslim League in three provinces in the pre-Independence era.
Ambedkar said he would expose an app that reportedly reveals multiple entries in electoral rolls.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
