New Delhi, Aug 13 (IANS) Stepping up the offensive on the government, Congress leader Pawan Khera on Wednesday demanded that all ministers should quit their positions and fresh Parliamentary elections be conducted to restore the ‘purity and sanctity’ of India’s electoral machinery.

To justify his demands, he said that the ruling party has supported its claims of ‘vote chori’ and voter list fraud, referring to Anurag Thakur’s press conference on Wednesday, and therefore, this provides a ‘good basis’ for conducting elections afresh.

Pawan Khera, in a direct interaction with IANS, said that Congress has been reiterating claims of widespread rigging in the voters’ list and electoral rolls, on account of fraudulent data, and the BJP also corroborated its charges today.

“As the ruling and opposition parties are on the same page, the big question is what will the Election Commission do now?” he asked.

Khera, also the chairman of Congress’s media and publicity department, levelled another startling charge as he accused the ruling BJP and poll panel of being hand in glove.

He claimed that BJP MP Anurag Thakur got access to electronic voter lists data in just two days, something for which they had been pleading before the Election Commission for over six months.

Earlier in the day, Anurag Thakur flagged the issue of ‘fake voters’ in many constituencies, particularly spotlighting some high-profile constituencies of Opposition leaders including that of Priyanka Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav & others and said that these parties & their leaders were anxious and worried over ‘purge’ in the fraudulent list of their constituencies and this was the reason for stir against SIR.

He accused the Congress-led Opposition of running a vicious propaganda campaign to discredit and disparage the entire revision exercise, and also gave a breakdown of dubious votes in respective constituencies.

Responding to the charge of fake 93,000 votes in Priyanka Gandhi’s Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, Khera said that the Congress MP won by a margin of 4.10 lakh votes, and if close to 1 lakh votes were to be considered bogus or ineligible, this didn’t pose any threat to her candidature.

He accused the EC and BJP of being hand in glove to target the Opposition and said that the voter verification was merely an exercise to delete its support base.

–IANS

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