Aizawl: The joint publicity committee of the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM)-Congress combine on Friday slammed the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF) for lodging a complaint against its joint candidate, Lalnghinglova Hmar, over a misprint of the MNF party’s symbol in a local daily in which Hmar is the joint editor.
Expressing disappointment over the show-cause notice served to the ZPM-Congress candidate, the joint publicity committee said that Hmar was neither the editor nor the publisher of the newspaper and, therefore, has no any responsibility over the misprint.
While expressing grief, the joint forum said that blaming the joint editor only because he was a candidate was an instance of “dirty politics” and is not only an attempt to mislead the people but also to undermine the reputation of the joint editor of MIzo daily Vanglaini.
The joint publicity committee also blamed the MNF for launching continuous attack on the newspaper even after its editor K Sapdanga had apologised to the MNF leaders and the readers citing “inadvertent mistake”.
The joint committee also expressed their apprehension that the posters might have been deliberately wrongly printed with the initiative of the MNF to confuse the voters.
Vanglaini, the largest circulated vernacular paper, had allegedly misprinted the symbol of MNF as “sun” instead of the actual symbol “star” on Thursday when polling was held in Mizoram for the lone Lok Sabha seat and assembly by-election for Aizawl West-I seat.
Significantly, chief minister and MNF president Zoramthanga slammed both the editors of Vanglaini for the alleged misprint sand said that it was done “deliberately”. He further alleged that the local paper had also deliberately misprint a party symbol before assembly polls in the past.
