Rahul Gandhi's namesake in EC list of disqualified persons for non-reporting of poll expenses
New Delhi (PTI): One "Rahul Gandhi K E S/o Valsamma" figures in an Election Commission list of persons disqualified from contesting polls for failing to lodge account of election expenses.
He had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as an Independent and had polled 2196 votes from the Wayanad seat in Kerala from where Congress leader Rahul Gandhi won with over 7 lakh votes.
It is common for namesake independent candidates to contest against established leaders but all of them need to submit account of election expenses among other mandatory requirements under EC rules and the Representation of the People Act.
Incidentally the Congress leader was also disqualified last week, but for another reason - his conviction and sentencing in a criminal defamation case.
On March 29, the poll panel had issued an updated list of persons disqualified under Section 10 A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.
Rahul Gandhi K E S/o Valsamma stands disqualified from September 13, 2021 till September 13, 2024.
According to Section 10A, if the Election Commission is satisfied that a person has failed to lodge an account of election expenses within the time and in the manner required by law and has no good reason or justification for the failure, the poll panel shall, by order published in the Official Gazette, declare him to be disqualified and any such person shall be disqualified for a period of three years from the date of the order.
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Kejriwal says he, AAP leaders will go to BJP office on Sunday; dares PM to get them arrested
New Delhi (PTI): Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Saturday that he and other AAP leaders would go to the BJP headquarters on March 19 "so that the prime minister can send anyone he wants to jail".
The BJP is saying they will send AAP MP Raghav Chadha and Delhi ministers Atishi and Saurabh Bharadwaj to jail too, he claimed at a press briefing hours after his aide Bibhav Kumar was arrested in connection with the alleged assault on his party's parliamentarian Swati Maliwal.
Kejriwal, who is also the AAP national convener, however, asserted that his party could not be crushed by sending its leaders to jail.
Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "playing the game" of sending AAP leaders such as Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain, and Sanjay Singh to jail, he said, "I along with my MLAs and MPs would go to the BJP office at noon tomorrow so that the prime minister can send anyone he wants to jail."
"The AAP is an idea. For as many AAP leaders you jail, the country would produce leaders a hundred times more," Kejriwal said.
He claimed that the AAP's "fault" was that its government in Delhi built good schools, set up Mohalla Clinics, provided free treatment and ensured free round-the-clock power supply in the city which the BJP could not do.
Kejriwal, who was arrested in a money laundering case linked to the alleged Delhi excise policy scam, has been granted interim bail till June 1 by the Supreme Court to campaign in the Lok Sabha polls. He will have to surrender and go back to jail on June 2, a day after the last phase of polling in the general elections.
