Samajwadi Party pins hope on Centre to ensure EC's directions are followed

Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) [India], Jan. 31 (ANI): The Samajwadi Party on Tuesday expressed hope that the Centre would take care of the directions provided by the Election Commission to ensure that the upcoming state assembly polls are conducted in an unbiased manner. "Our Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav gave the Centre a very good suggestion, but they did not listen to us, now it is their call. We hope that they will let the election process to be conducted in an unbiased way," Samajwadi Party leader Juhi Singh told ANI. Singh further said that the BJP should work as per the direction of the Election Commission in order to ensure a fair election process in the poll-bound states and would not disturb its functioning, like it did with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) over demonetisation. The Union Budget Session is scheduled to start from today with President Pranab Mukherjee addressing both the Houses of Parliament. The Economic Survey will also be tabled later in the day and the Rail Budget will be presented with the General Budget this year on Wednesday. The Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs had recommended that the Budget session should commence on January 31 and the Union Budget be presented the next day so that the new financial provisions come into force from April 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year. Last week, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to postpone the Union Budget till the Assembly Elections. Akhilesh, in his letter highlighted the Election Commission's direction to the Centre over the Union Budget against state-specific schemes and said that in such circumstances no benefits would be provide to Uttar Pradesh which comprise of the largest population of the country. He further said that this incident would directly influence the development works of Uttar Pradesh. The Election Commission on January 23, ordered that no state specific schemes shall be announced in national budget in the interest of free and fair elections, adding that in the budget speech the government's achievements in respect of five poll-bound states will not be highlighted. (ANI)