Rahul Gandhi accuses EC of being 'biased', asks PM Modi to hold at least one press meet

NEW DELHI: Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address at least one press conference before the elections conclude saying it was looking terrible on the international level.

"Please tell the Prime Minister to do a couple of press conferences also. Its really looking very bad," Gandhi told reporters at the party headquarters here.

"It is looking shameful out there. He is looking terrible on the international stage, Indian Prime Minister does not have the guts to stand in front of the Indian media leave the international media," he said.

"Its looking bad, so please tell him to do at least one before the elections are over," he said.

The Congress chief has been demanding a presser from Modi and keeps repeating it every time he meets the press.

Rahul accused the Election Commission (EC) of being "biased" against the opposition and said that capturing of institutions will have a negative effect in the future.

"Where there are matters of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Election Commission is on a straight line and on the matters of the opposition, it is completely biased," the Congress leader said at a press conference here.

He was responding to a question on the poll panel giving a clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his Varanasi speech on armed forces and dubbing Congress as sinking Titanic ship in Maharashtra's Nanded.

"The style of functioning of Modi and the RSS is to hold the institutions. It is visible on the Supreme Court, Election Commission, Reserve Bank of



India and everywhere else," Gandhi said.

He added that he does not expect the poll panel to be not affected by that pressure.

"All these institutional capture that has been taking place will have negative consequences in the future.

"We cannot allow Indian institutions to be disturbed, controlled and crushed. And anybody who colludes and falls to this pressure is committing a crime," Gandhi said.

'Who let Masood Azhar out?'

Pointing fingers at the BJP for being the one who allowed Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar to return to Pakistan and carry out terror activities over the years, Rahul Gandhi asserted his party will deal with terrorism sternly and strictly.

"Who sent him there (in Pakistan)? How he went there? Which government sent him? The BJP negotiates with terrorists and buckles under pressure. They bowed down before terror.

"Masood Azhar is a terrorist and strict action should be taken against him. Terrorism has to be dealt with sternly", he said while asserting that the Congress will never negotiate with terrorists.

The Modi government, while taking credit for getting Azhar blacklisted, should also tell the citizens that it was during a BJP regime that the JeM chief was released and he transformed into an even bigger threat to India, the Congress had said earlier on Thursday following the UN action.

Azhar was released from a prison in India in 1999, in exchange for 155 hostages held on an Indian Airlines flight that had been hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The terror lord then created a base for himself in Pakistan for two decades.