Chennai: The BJP has alleged that its candidates for the May 16 Assembly poll have been offered “hawala money” by anonymous callers to bribe voters.
Strangely, the “callers” had claimed to phone from the BJP headquarters here while extending the “offer.”
“The motive of the culprits seems to be to tarnish the image of the BJP,” says D. Kuppuramu, BJP state vice president’, who petitioned the election commission to take immediate action against the culprits.
He claimed that some opposition parties, their candidates and henchmen “set up” miscreants and caused disturbance to the BJP candidates by making anonymous calls to the candidates’ phone numbers with an aim to damage the reputation of the party.
The candidates had received the calls on May 7 and 8 from the mobile number 7229025206 and other numbers and the anonymous callers claimed that they were calling from BJP headquarters.
The substance of the message is almost uniform. “We are sending you hawala money to be used for offering to voters as bribe for voting in favour of the BJP candidates. We want you to win. Please say how much money you may require to win in this constituency. Please tell us, even if it is Rs 20 lakh we are prepared to arrange to reach your hands immediately. Even if you require more, it will definitely reach you. Please tell us the code word and number to identify you by our messenger,” the caller had said.
In separate memoranda submitted to the Chief Election Commissioner of India (CEC) and Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), the party listed out the names of 15 candidates disturbed by the calls besides mentioning the mobile numbers from
where the calls were said to have originated.
“The BJP never indulged in such electoral malpractices. The motive of the
culprits seems to be to tarnish the image of the BJP and also shows an ulterior criminal intent to damage the name of the party and to mislead candidates into a
criminal litigation,” the memorandum said and sought the election commission to take immediate action against the culprits.
In another memorandum the BJP demanded action against the culprits who attacked the party’s candidate for Ramanathapuram constituency Durai Kannan and 15 others on May 8 at Periyapattinam village.
