By Shreya Maskara
With rounds of a pre-poll alliance in Madhya Pradesh doing the rounds, Congress has gone to the Election Commission seeking inquiry about the number of fake voters. Meanwhile, a tweet morcha surfaced to protest rising fuel prices, launched by Mumbai Congress. Here’s everything you may have missed in politics last week.
Congress goes to Election Commission about Madhya Pradesh
Congress said there have been irregularities in the voter list in Madhya Pradesh and added that over 60 lakh registered voters are fake, as per media reports. Congress chief for Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath told ANI that the party has provided evidence to the EC about the same.
“We have provided evidence to the Election Commission that there are approximately 60 lakh fake voters registered in the voting list. These names have been deliberately registered in the list. This is not administrative negligence, but administrative misuse,” Nath said. The party has requested the EC to inquire about the same and requested to remove all duplicate entries out of the 230 Assembly constituencies of Madhya Pradesh. These reports come during a time when rumours of a pre-poll alliance or an opposition ‘mahagathbandhan’ are doing rounds in Madya Pradesh.
Tweet morcha to protest rising fuel prices
Mumbai Congress organised a ”tweet morcha” to protest against continuously rising fuel prices. The tweet campaign was launched by Congress’ Mumbai unit chief Sanjay Nirupam, along with author Sucheta Dalal at the Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh. According to the organisers, the twitter protest with the hashtag #cutfueltaxes and #tweetmorcha, got 7,629 tweets within an hour and a half of being launched.
“Mumbai has been witnessing consistent rise in fuel prices despite crude prices decreasing internationally. While this has disrupted the budget of the common man, the BJP government has reached new heights of insensitivity by reducing petrol prices by just one paise,” Nirupam said.
BJP stands in Lok Sabha with a slim majority
In the Lok Sabha by-polls, the BJP was only able to retain one seat out of three, and now has a very thin majority of 272 in the 539 member house. The majority mark in the Lok Sabha has been brought down to 270 after the resignation of three MPs from Karnataka and the vacant seat in Anantnag after the by-poll was deferred. Due to significant losses in by-polls, including Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, BJP’s command in the Lok Sabha has definitely come down after it won 282 seats in 2014 elections. However, the figure is unlikely to make a difference as the BJP-led NDA has around 315 seats in the house.
Shreya Maskara is a senior copy editor at Qrius