In an incident seen as a violation of the electoral code of conduct, a man was caught by the Maharashtra police on Saturday with ₹10 lakh, which was allegedly meant to pay the labourers working at a rally ground in Ramtek in Maharashtra ahead of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's rally on Sunday.
The Maharashtra police chased down the car driver carrying ₹10 lakh in the Sangamner area of Nagpur after the latter tried to avoid police bandobast, according to a report by India Today.
The driver, identified as Mohammed Aleem, claimed that the money was meant to pay labourers working to prepare the ground for Rahul's rally, in a violation of the Election Commission's (EC) guideline that payment to contractors for election rallies must be done via cheque and not cash.
In its 'Compendium of Instructions on Election Expenditure Monitoring', the EC has stated that 'efforts should be made as far as possible to make all payments through cheques and avoid carrying huge amount of cash in the constituency during election campaign'. It states that all expenses for the election campaign above ₹20,000 should be made via a cheque from the bank account of the candidate.
