Trinamool Congress complains against Sourav Ganguly

Mar 30, 2011 |

Kolkata

Tags:

The Election Commission's decision of selecting former India cricket captain Sourav Ganguly for an audio-visual promo for West Bengal assembly elections has run into trouble with Trinamool Congress complaining that he was politically affiliated to ruling CPI(M).

"We had taken a verbal assurance from Sourav that he won't campaign for any political party before selecting him as an icon of the commission," Additional Chief Electoral Officer N K Sahana said on Wednesday.

Ganguly and percussionist Bikram Ghosh were selected by the Election Commission that produced the audio-visual for telecast on major channels to create interest among the people to vote.

The controversy arose when Urban Development Minister Ashok Bhattacharya, belonging to CPI(M), claimed Ganguly would campaign for him in the elections.

"Trinamool Congress gave a CD where the Minister's and Ganguly's versions are recorded," Sahana said.

"We have gone through it and the decision regarding the issue will be taken on Thursday," he said.

"If he agrees to campaign for any political party, then we will have to withdraw the promo. We cannot stop him from expressing his political opinion publicly," Sahana said when asked whether Ganguly could campaign for a political party.

Trinamool Congress said in its complaint that it would be against election ethics for Ganguly to be the icon of the EC when he was politically affiliated to CPI (M).

The former Indian captain was not available for comments.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/64810" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-3608554611ac09a0c58dafaa43fd1329" value="form-3608554611ac09a0c58dafaa43fd1329" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="88626674" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>