Congress accuses election officials of bias in Goa

Panaji, March 21 (IANS) The Congress Friday accused office of the chief electoral officer (CEO) of bias towards the ruling BJP in Goa, claiming that the authority was dragging feet over a complaint against the chief minister's office staffers.

"On March 15, we complained to the CEO about two senior officials of the chief minister office (CMO) campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Facebook, despite model code of conduct coming into force. There has been no response from the office yet," Congress spokesperson Durgadas Kamat told reporters.

The spokesperson said the Congress suspected the CEO's office had a bias towards the BJP-led government. Despite the complaint joint secretary in the CMO Siddharth Kunkolienkar continued to campaign for the BJP on the social networking site.

"The very fact that officials from the CMO are showing such contempt for the election authority shows that something is fishy," Kamat said.

According to the code of conduct issued by the Election Commission of India, government officials are banned from political activity.

On Wednesday, CEO Keshav Chandra told reporters that typically a code of conduct violation complaint was disposed within 24 hours.

"At the most if we need consultation from other agencies, we take 24 hours more," Chandra added.

He also told reporters that vis-a-vis the complaint filed by the Congress regarding the violation of the code of conduct via Facebook had already been referred to the chief secretary for comments.