Elections should have been completed in three or four phases, says Cong Prez Mallikarjun Kharge
Bengaluru, Mar 16: Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday said a seven phase election for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls meant that "Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to tour everywhere". Kharge opined that the polls should have rather been completed in three or four phases.
"We are not anxious about what is going to happen, but Modiji putting seven phases, it means that he wants to tour everywhere. In this country, I have also contested nearly 12 elections and there hardly used to be four phases. Sometimes it used to be even one phase. I have seen two phases also but maximum it used to be four," he told reporters here.
Kharge said conducting polls in seven phases meant that nearly all the development works will be stopped.
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"Stopping nearly 70-80 days, imagine how the country will progress? Because of the election code of conduct...materials will not be supplied. Budget will not be spent. So according to me this is not good. He could have completed within three or four phases," he said.
"So, it is easy for people also to get their businesses completed, infrastructure everything. It should have helped but anyways Modi is Modi," he added.
The 2024 Lok Sabha polls will be held in seven phases beginning from April 19 with the counting of votes scheduled on June 4 for the world's biggest election exercise, according to the announcement by the Election Commission.
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
