THANE: Cash and liquor apparently seem to top the charts of incentives allegedly used by political parties to lure voters in Thane district ahead of the assembly elections, as per a report compiled by the election department, officials informed on Sunday.
Vijay Deshmukh, Nodal Officer, model code of conduct (MCC), Thane, said the collective value of seized goods by various teams across the 18 assembly constituencies in the district after the code of conduct was imposed on October 15 is over Rs 27 crores. The value of cash and liquor accounts for the highest among other contrabands, he said.
The Belapur assembly constituency recorded the highest value of seized goods at Rs 6.4 crore, followed by Shahapur at Rs 4.2 crore and Thane at Rs 3.8 crore, reveals a report compiled by the nodal office for monitoring the model code of conduct (MCC) in Thane and accessed by this newspaper.
Of the total value of goods seized, Rs 15.5 crore cash was seized along with 6.3 lakh litres of liquor, which is worth Rs 3 crores, drugs worth Rs 1.7 crore, while ornaments worth Rs 23.2 lakh that were being used to entice voters were also seized along with various freebies collectively valued at around Rs 7 crores. Some prominent ‘freebies’ include gift vouchers, kitchen essentials like casseroles, pressure cookers, and sarees, in addition to sweets, informed Sukeshini Pagare, District Nodal Officer, MCC, Thane.
Meanwhile, Shiv Sena UBT candidate from Kopri-Pachpakhadi, Kedar Dighe, expressed concern at the massive quantum of freebies being blatantly doled out ahead of the assembly elections and questioned why the election department was failing to take cognisance.
“One of our functionaries spotted freebies and gifts like sarees being distributed in the Kopri-Pachpakhadi constituency. We alerted the police and the district administration, but they dodged the responsibility on each other, claiming the incident was beyond their ambit,” he questioned.