Kharge, Rahul hold key meet with party’s LS polls candidates, ask them to stay alert on counting day

New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and former AICC chief Rahul Gandhi held a meeting on Sunday with the party’s Lok Sabha candidates, legislative party leaders and state unit chiefs via video conferencing, and urged them to be alert and put in place measures to check any attempts of rigging on poll counting day, sources said.

Kharge, Gandhi, party general secretaries Jairam Ramesh and K C Venugopal, along with other senior leaders, interacted with the party’s Lok Sabha candidates and reviewed the preparations for the counting day on June 4.

The meeting comes a day after exit polls predicted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will retain power for a third straight term, with the BJP-led NDA expected to win a big majority in the Lok Sabha polls.

Ramesh has said that the exit polls that came out Saturday evening are “completely bogus” and have been “orchestrated and masterminded by the man whose exit is inevitable and guaranteed on June 4”.

“These are all part of the psychological games being played by the outgoing prime minister (Narendra Modi) and the outgoing home minister (Amit Shah). The outgoing home minister calls up 150 District Magistrates and collectors yesterday. The results that the exit polls have come up with bear no relation to reality,” the Congress leader said.

Leaders of several INDIA bloc parties had also met here on Saturday and took stock of the opposition’s preparations leading up to the June 4 counting of votes polled in the Lok Sabha elections, and asserted they will get more than 295 seats, enough for them to form the next government.

Addressing the media after two-and-a-half-hour confabulations at his residence, Kharge had said the leaders of the alliance dwelt on a host of issues, including the precautions to be taken on the counting day on Tuesday. He said they have instructed their party workers to not leave the counting halls till all formalities are completed.