• Source:JND
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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s bag was checked by poll authorities on Saturday at Dhamangaon Railway in Maharashtra's Amravati district where he is scheduled to address a public rally for the November 20 assembly election. The bag was checked after Gandhi’s helicopter landed at the helipad in Dhamangaon Railway, which is among the eight assembly seats in the district.

While interacting with the reporters, former state minister and Congress' Teosa MLA Yashomati Thakur, questioned the move by the authorities. She asked why they were not checking bags of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah or Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

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The checking of bags of leaders, a practice of the poll authorities to enforce the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), came to the fore in the state's election campaign after Shiv Sena (UBT) supremo and former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray's bags were checked in Yavatmal and Latur. The party criticized the actions as biased, claiming they are part of an effort to unfairly target opposition leaders amid the ongoing enforcement of MCC.

In response to Uddhav’s allegations, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, showing the checking of Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ bags by the airport authorities, and said merely holding the Constitution for “show” is not enough and one must also follow the constitutional system.

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In its post, the BJP said that some people have the habit of ‘showing off’, "Carrying the Constitution in hand alone isn’t enough; one must also respect constitutional processes. We simply request that everyone should have a sense of regard for the Constitution,” the party wrote on X.

This comes after Uddhav Thackeray expressed his frustration with election officials inspecting his bag in Yavatmal and Latur ahead of the elections, questioning whether similar checks are carried out on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah when they visit Maharashtra for rallies.

According to news agency PTI, Fadnavis reacted to Thackeary’s allegations and said that the Shiv Sena UBT chief is trying to distract the voters with pointless protesting against the inspection, and was "seeking votes by whining”.

(With Agency Inputs)