The Congress on Friday urged the Election Commission to ensure a level playing field during the Assembly polls in Jharkhand after party leader Rahul Gandhi’s helicopter was not granted permission to take off in Godda district.
Earlier in the day, Gandhi’s helicopter was grounded for nearly two hours in Mahagam as it was not granted clearance by the Air Traffic Control, India Today reported. The leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha was scheduled to depart after addressing a public rally.
The clearance for Gandhi’s helicopter was held up due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Bihar’s Jamui district, which affected the airspace availability in the region, India Today quoted unidentified officials as saying.
Following the two-hour delay, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh wrote to the Election Commission and asked it to “urgently intervene in this situation and ensure that the level playing field is not disrupted in such a manner”.
In a memorandum to the poll panel, Ramesh said that Gandhi was in Jharkhand to campaign for the Congress. “Shri Rahul Gandhi and his staff had secured all the requisite permissions for travelling across the State and attending all the pre-scheduled election rallies,” he said.
Gandhi and his team were to take off at 1.15 pm from Godda to fly to other locations across the state as per “approved scheduled and permissions in place”, the letter added.
“However, their mode of travel, which was permitted to fly at 1.15pm, has not been allowed to take flight,” it said. “They have been informed that due to the protocol of other leaders in the vicinity, a no-fly zone restriction had been put in place.”
Ramesh said that “all subsequent programmes of Shri Rahul Gandhi (for which prior permission had been secured)” were either delayed or cancelled due to the delay.
“If such a situation is allowed to prevail, then the ruling regime and its leaders can always take undue advantage of such protocols and limit the election campaign of Opposition leaders,” he added.
“There should be a level playing field in campaigning,” Ramesh said on X. “The PM’s [prime minister] campaign cannot take precedence over that of all others. Today Rahul Gandhi got delayed in Jharkhand on this account.”
Jharkhand minister and Congress leader Dipika Pandey Singh also questioned whether the right to campaign freely in this country was reserved solely for the prime minister.
“The country’s top Opposition leader has been kept waiting in the chopper for over an hour,” India Today quoted Singh as saying. “I don’t understand why the BJP is doing this,” she said, adding that it was “obstructing our campaign efforts to prevent us from contesting elections on equal footing”.
Voting for the Jharkhand Assembly polls will be held in two phases on November 13 and November 20. The counting of votes will take place on November 23, alongside that of the Maharashtra elections.