Congress drops Shrinate from Maharajganj seat for Lok Sabha polls amid Kangana Ranaut controversy

The Indian National Congress on Wednesday dropped its social media department head Supriya Shrinate from the Maharajganj seat in Uttar Pradesh amid the ongoing controversy surrounding her post on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Kangana Ranaut.

Shrinate had unsuccessfully contested the seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections but lost.

This time, Congress opted for Virendra Chaudhary, despite the speculations that she could be fielded once again from the seat.

The Congress announced candidates for four seats each in Uttar Pradesh and Telangana, and three each in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. With this, the total number of candidates declared by the party so far has reached 208.

The Election Commission issued Shrinate a show cause notice for her comments on a social media post, which has now been deleted, terming it 'undignified and in bad taste.' The comments were made after Ranaut, a Bollywood actress, was fielded from the Mandi seat for the upcoming LS elections.

According to the EC notice, she had posted: "Kya bhav chal raha hai Mandi mein, koi batayega?"

Shrinate had said "As soon as I came to know, I deleted that post. Everyone who knows me, also knows very well that I can never make personal and indecent comments towards any woman. I wanted to know how this happened."

EC has asked political parties and candidates to refrain from criticism of all aspects of private life, not connected with the public activities of the leaders or workers of other parties.

"Criticism of other parties or their workers based on unverified allegations or distortion shall be avoided. Low level personal attacks to insult the rivals shall not be made. The political parties and candidates to refrain from any deeds/action/utterances that may be construed as being repugnant to the honour and dignity of women," it said.