With just a day left for campaigning in the Pauri Garhwal Lok Sabha byelection, both the BJP and the Congress exchanged shrill words on Thursday while levelling charges of impropriety on the opponent party’s candidate.

While the BJP accused Congress candidate Satpal Maharaj's wife Amrita Rawat of involving in corrupt practices during her stint as the state minister, the Congress alleged that the BJP, which has fielded Lt Gen T P S Rawat from the seat, has accused him of being involved in the excise scam when he was a Congress minister. BJP spokesperson Devender Bhasin claimed that diaries and calendars printed on behalf of the state power corporation during the Congress regime were printed at a printing press owned by Amrita.

Meanwhile, the Congress said that the BJP had accused Rawat of being involved in the alleged excise scandal during his stint as a Congress minister and did not allow the Assembly to function for three days. “The BJP had even listed the alleged excise scandal in its poll manifesto," said Congress spokesperson Surender Aggarwal. However, Rawat, who admitted that his opponent in the bypoll, Satpal Maharaj, brought him into politics, said that raising of the excise scandal during his stint as the minister by BJP was part of the politics.