Engaged to Samajwadi Party MP: ECI drops Rinku Singh from campaign

New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) dropped young cricketer Rinku Singh, the T20/IPL batting sensation, from its voter awareness campaigns, reportedly due to his engagement to Samajwadi Party MP Priya Saroj. Rinku’s face will not be featured in posters and banners under ECI’s Systematic Voter Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) campaign, according to the Free Press Journal.

According to reports, in its move to drop Rinku Singh from the position of ambassador of the campaign, the poll body instructed officials to remove pictures of the cricketer from publicity materials like posters, videos, and websites. Sources told the Deccan Herald that ECI claimed that it made the move to maintain impartiality in the awareness campaign. Singh is now associated with a political person, and ECI’s policy is against the same. According to its policy, any person who is associated with a political person cannot be kept within the voter awareness campaign.

Rinku Singh and SP MP from Machhlishahr (Jaunpur), Priya Saroj, got engaged on June 8 in Lucknow. The event was attended by 20 MPs from Parliament, including the P chief and former CM Akhilesh Yadav, Dimple Yadav, Shivpal Yadav, Jaya Bachchan, and Ramgopal Yadav, who all publicly congratulated the couple, Bhaskar English reported.

Justifying its move, the ECI claimed that maintaining neutrality in all public campaigns is a top priority. The poll body acknowledged that Rinku is a respectable athlete but claimed that his engagement to an active politician raised legitimate concerns. The poll body claimed that Rinku’s personal ties can now be viewed as politically aligned, which could compromise the non-partisan nature of the body’s outreach efforts.