"Election rigging must be taken seriously for democracy to thrive": SP MP Dimple Yadav

New Delhi [India], August 12 (ANI): Samajwadi Party MP Dimple Yadav on Tuesday stressed the need to raise voices against election rigging now, saying the government and Election Commission must take the matter seriously if the country is to be governed democratically and people's opinions are to matter.
Speaking to reporters, Yadav said, "When will we raise our voice against all the rigging if not now? If we want our country to be governed democratically, where the opinions of the people matter, then it is very important that the current government and the Election Commission take cognisance of the entire matter."
"It shows the extent to which the BJP can go because it doesn't want the real issues of the country to be addressed. The government has failed on all these fronts," she added.
Reacting to the same incident, Congress leader Shama Mohamed said, "This is a democracy, and everybody has the right to protest. Rahul Gandhi has put out a press conference, and the EC has to reply to them. During the UPA times, we remember the protests of Nirbhaya. We remember how Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi met them and spoke to them."
She asserted, "During the farmers' protests, they were not allowed inside Delhi. MPs, the LoP, the Congress president and various senior leaders from other parties are going, walking towards the Parliament to the EC's office. Why should the EC not meet them? If they cannot meet the election commission, then who can? So this itself says that the election commission is on the wrong..."
Earlier, on the seventeenth day of the Monsoon Session, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi and party president Mallikarjun Kharge joined fellow INDIA bloc members in staging a protest in Parliament over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) issue.
Several Opposition MPs arrived wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan '124 Not Out'. (ANI)