A day after the Election Commission of India took cognisance of Lt-Governor GC Murmu’s reflections on the Assembly elections, an official spokesperson for Raj Bhawan came out with a clarification. He said with reference to the statement issued by the EC in response to various news reports attributed to the Lt-Governor, he had been “misquoted as making claims that the conduct of the elections of the UT of J&K after the delimitation exercise in the UT is over”.

A statement by the EC had referred to a number of media reports in the past few days in which he had spoken of the polls that was tantamount to the interference in the working of the ECI.

The clarification read: “It is hereby clarified that the Lt-Governor has always maintained that the call regarding holding of elections will be taken at appropriate time and the Election Commission of India is an autonomous constitutional body who have their own processes. The purported statement attributed to the L-G has been quoted out of context and factually not attributable to the Lt-Governor.”

Then the clarification, after having mentioned the ECI’s reaction to series of media reports, refers to the report that appeared in The Tribune on Tuesday and has mentioned one of the quotes in the story to substantiate that he has been misquoted on the holding of polls after the delimitation is over. — TNS