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Priyanka allowed to stay in Rae Bareli

Polling officials wait with their electronic voting machines after being assigned duties in Rae Bareli district on Sunday. Polling in the Rae Bareli byelection is scheduled for Monday. — AFP photo

Rae Bareli/Lucknow, May 7
A desperate Samajwadi Party (SP) today alleged that Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s election agent Priyanka had hatched a conspiracy to carry out booth capturing in tomorrow’s byelection in Rae Bareli but suffered a setback when its demand for getting her out of the constituency was rejected by the Returning Officer.

In a letter to the Election Commission, SP state unit president Ram Saran Das had asked for Priyanka’s immediate exit from Rae Bareli.

This was stated by SP general secretary Beni Prasad Verma, whose son-in-law is the party candidate in the byelection, at a press conference in Lucknow.

The Returning Officer at Rae Bareli earlier rejected the SP demand for Priyanka’s exit from the constituency.

Charging Priyanka with hatching a “conspiracy to capture booths during tomorrow’s polling”, Verma alleged that a large number of policemen in mufti from Congress-ruled states of Punjab and Haryana had reached Rae Bareli to carry out the plan.

In another letter to the poll panel, SP candidate Rajkumar Chaudhary said Priyanka could not become the election agent as she enjoyed SPG security. The letter alleged that she had been terrorising the electorate.

The Election Commission had earlier directed all political functionaries who were not voters in Rae Bareli and enjoyed state security to leave the constituency by 5 pm yesterday.

This order, however, was not applicable to election agents. — PTI