New Delhi, Feb 3: Congress MP and the Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi on Monday made a rare praise for the ‘Make In India’ program, even commending the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for bringing in the ‘good idea’ but then went to disapprove it by calling it ‘damp squib’.

Speaking in the Lok Sabha during the Motion of Thanks on the President’s address, Gandhi said ‘Make in India’ was conceptually good but the PM failed to deliver the results despite making a good effort.

“Prime Minister proposed the Make In India program. I think it was a good idea, however the result is in front of you all, ” said the Congress MP.

He slammed the NDA government for allowing the manufacturing to decline from 15.3 per cent of the GDP in 2014 to 12.6 per cent, as of now.

“I am not blaming the Prime Minister, it would be wrong to say that he didn’t try. I could say that he tried but failed,” he added.

Talking about unemployment, Gandhi said that India, as a nation, has collectively failed to address joblessness.

“Both the UPA and the NDA have not been able to offer a solution to the youth over joblessness,” he said.

Earlier, he said the President’s address appeared to him to be a repeat of the previous and lacked new ideas and offered to present a blueprint of an address that an INDI bloc would present on coming to power.

Calling unemployment as a social problem and linking it to social unrest, Gandhi said the increasing number of people in jail, the rising amount of money being spent on police forces and internal security reflected the rising social tension in the country.

Addressing the policy makers, Gandhi said that the country needs to better organise its production.

“All governments since 1990 have done well in organising consumption or services but production or manufacturing has lagged,” he said.

Describing the coming era as a door to a revolutionary battle between electric motor and internal combustion motors, Gandhi said the four technologies driving the entire revolution are – electric motor, batteries, optics and artificial intelligence.

“AI on its own is nothing without data. And when we look at data today, it is very clear that the production data used to make mobile phones or cars is owned by China and the consumption data is owned by the US,” he said, asking India to introspect on what data is going to drive its AI revolution.

“The answer is nothing, India does not have any form of data,” he said, calling for educating children about the four revolutionary technologies and building a production network to get access to production data.

China has at least a 10-years lead on India over the use of these technologies and we need to start building capabilities in these areas, he said.

New Delhi, Feb 3: Hours before the close of the election campaign on Monday, AAP leader and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday alleged a conspiracy to manipulate EVMs in the February 5 Assembly election, claiming that the rivals are planning to erase about 10 per cent of his party’s votes.

Calling upon AAP supporters to vote in large numbers, Kejriwal said, in a video, “Every single party supporter should step out and vote on February 5.”

Kejriwal also announced the launch of a website on which the AAP would upload six key informations about each polling booth so that the EVMs are not tampered with after voting.

“We have turned wiser after our experience in Haryana and Maharashtra elections,” he said.

To counter attempts of wrongdoing on the counting day, the six informations to be uploaded on AAP website would include name of the polling booth, name of booth presiding officer, the ID number of control unit, the last count of votes cast till night on the booth, the percentage of battery charge in the last EVM machine used at a booth and the name of the polling agent.

He said the only way to defeat the design of EVM manipulation is to raise our party’s voter turnout by 15 per cent so that even if they try to erase our votes by 10 per cent, we may still win by 5 per cent.

Earlier on Sunday, the Congress raised doubts about the possible use of unfair means in the February 5 Delhi Assembly election and constituted an eight-member Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts (EAGLE) to monitor “the conduct of free and fair elections by the Election Commission of India.”

Kejriwal’s allegation on possible EVM manipulation is the latest in a series of charges levelled against the Election Commission of India.

Apart from accusing the EC of not stopping alleged election code violations by rival candidates, the AAP National Convenor has also accused Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar of being biased in favour of the BJP as he was looking for a post-retirement posting after February 28.

In a separate video issued earlier, Kejriwal addressed voters availing the facility of voting from home and called upon them not to get their fingers inked even after accepting any cash, if any, offered by the teams visiting their residences.

New Delhi, Feb 3: Campaigning for the most hotly contested Assembly election in Delhi ever ended at 5 p.m. on Monday, drawing curtains on months-long, high-decibel electioneering replete with AI-generated memes, acerbic jibes and venomous barbs and a race to woo voters with freebies, including monthly doles to women and the youth.

The ruling AAP and rival BJP and the Congress engaged their star campaigners liberally with the pack being led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Cabinet Minister Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and Piyush Goyal, Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Punjab CM Bhagwant Singh Mann and Chief Ministers of other BJP and Congress-ruled states.

Cricketer Harbhajan Singh and filmstar Shatrughan Sinha added star power to the AAP’s campaign.

Cash assistance for women, heated exchanges over alleged corruption revolving around liquor scam and ‘Sheesh Mahal’, joblessness, water supply and sewers, toxic air, polluted Yamuna and free health insurance dominated the discourse.

At the peak of the campaign, the campaign turned into a direct fight between ‘Modi ki Guarantee’, ‘Kejriwal ki Guarantee’ and ‘Congress ki Guarantee, with all three parties offering freebies to woo voters.

The ruling AAP and rival BJP and Congress also locked horns on several occasions over issues of alleged poll code violation, deletion of voters’ names, suspected Bangladeshis enrolled as voters and attempts to influence voters using lies and wrong information.

The hot seats of New Delhi of AAP National Convenor Arvind Kejriwal and Kalkaji seat of Chief Minister Atishi attracted special attention all through the campaign.

The fiercely campaign for the February 5 Assembly election has been defined by an unprecedented use of AI-generated spoofs and memes, sharp political jibes, and high-decibel roadshows.

The tech-driven campaign was supplemented by conventional methods like padyatra, corner meetings, handouts, newspaper ads, recorded phone calls by Kejriwal to voters and personal letters sent by Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva to voters.

On the final day of campaigning, the BJP organised 22 roadshows and rallies across Delhi while PM Modi issued a video on his interaction with students, as the party looked to end the AAP’s run of three successive electoral wins since 2013.

Similarly, the AAP’s last day dash saw Kejriwal holding public meetings in the Chhatarpur and Kalkaji Assembly constituencies and issuing videos alleging attempts to manipulate EVMs.

Throughout the campaign, the ruling AAP raised issues of poll code violation, alleged EC bias in favour of the BJP and wooed voters by showcasing its development model and offering 15 guarantees, including monthly financial assistance for women and others.

The ruling party also remained confident of securing a fourth straight term, banking on its governance model of free welfare schemes and blunting the rivals’ allegations of corruption and misgovernance.

The Congress, which ruled the capital for 15 years between 1998 and 2013, appeared energised, with a segment of Muslim voters showing faith in it in the recent civic elections.

On Monday, the Delhi election office imposed a prohibition on the display to the public of any election matter by means of cinematograph, television or other similar apparatus and holding public meetings during a period of “48 hours ending with hour fixed for conclusion of poll during the General Election to Legislative Assembly of NCT of Delhi-2025.”

All eyes on voting day will be on the voting turnout with the election department desperately trying to get more voters to polling booths.

The turnout in the 2020 Delhi Assembly election stood at 62.82 per cent, 4.65 per cent lower than 67.47 per cent in 2015. In 2013, the turnout was 66.02 per cent, 8.42 per cent higher than 2008’s 57.6 per cent.

Voting to pick a new 70-member Delhi Assembly will be held on February 5 and the result will be declared on February 8. In the outgoing House, the AAP has 62 candidates and the BJP has eight.

According to the data of the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), 1.56 crore voters are eligible to cast their ballots across 13,766 polling stations. Among the total voters, 83.76 lakh are men, 72.36 lakh are women, and 1,267 are third-gender voters.

There are 699 candidates in the fray as compared to 672 in the 2020 poll.

The Election Commission has also introduced a Queue Management System (QMS) application for the first time in India, allowing voters to check real-time crowd levels at polling stations through the Delhi Election – 2025 QMS app.

Under the home voting facility for senior citizens and persons with disabilities, nearly 7,000 eligible voters cast their votes even before the pressing of the first EVM button on polling day.