Panaji: Congress on Thursday complained to the Chief Electoral Officer alleging BJP is distributing booklets during election campaigns, which are printed by the government using taxpayers money.
GPCC Vice President Sunil Kawthankar in his written complaint has said “BJP is using Booklets printed by the Department of Information and Publicity, Govt. of Goa, for distribution to the public during campaigning,”
He said that this is utter abuse of power and taxpayers money by the BJP Government for campaigning, and thus is a serious offence. “All this expense should be reflected in the expenditure of BJP candidates. They are misusing state exchequer and printing booklets to distribute to voters,” he told reporters after lodging a complaint.
He said that it is a clear violation of the Model Code of Conduct. “It is shocking that the Election Commission which has got Officers all over the place, could not notice this blatant abuse of taxpayers money being committed by the ruling party members during the campaigning,” he said.
“BJP has earned thousands of crores through electoral bonds. This was extortion done by BJP using ED and CBI. Though they have so much wealth, still they are using taxpayers money for their campaign. This can’t be accepted,” Kawthankar said.
He has requested to immediately stop this illegal distribution and verify the source of these booklets and also add the same as expenditure incurred on printing to the North Goa Candidate of the BJP and book the Director of Information & Publicity for being hand in glove with the BJP workers to supply booklets printed with taxpayers money to BJP for use in the campaigning.
