Zee Media Bureau
New Delhi: Spelling fresh trouble for BJP`s chief ministerial candidate in Delhi Dr Harsh Vardhan, Congress on Monday approached the Election Commission complaining that he had made distorted claims on polio eradication.
Congress has demanding cancellation of Dr Vardhan`s nomination alleging that he has made wrong claims on polio eradication when he was the union health minister in Atal Behari Vajpayee`s cabinet.
Ridiculing BJP as being “Bahut Jhoothi Party”, AICC General Secretary for Delhi, Shakeel Ahmed, also said that Harsh Vardhan was showing a syndrome of resorting to lies.
“Harsh Vardhan was health minister of Delhi between 1993-98. In 1998, reported polio cases in Delhi were 47 and 73 in 1999. How he eradicated polio?” Ahmed questioned in a post on social networking site ‘Twitter`.
Talking to reporters later, Ahmed said, “When he remitted office in 1998, there were 47 cases of polio in Delhi. Figures show that the number rose to 73 in 1999. So how did he eradicate the disease if the number of polio cases rose the next year?
“BJP is running a series of election advertisements on radio, latching on to the false claim about Harsh Vardhan,” he said.
Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, had a few days back launched the revised edition of Harsh Vardhan`s book on polio eradication, ‘A Tale of Two Drops’.
She had also raised a call for “eradicating the Congress like Harsh Vardhan eradicated polio”.
