The Election Commission on Tuesday indicted Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa for announcing several pre-poll sops in Sattankulam constituency and conveyed its 'disapproval'.
"The full Commission has gone through carefully the contents of your letter and it is regretfully mentioned that the explanation offered has not been found satisfactory by the Commission," an EC spokesman said after a Commission meeting, which considered the state Chief Secretary Lakshmi Pranesh's letter to it.
"Using technical loopholes, indulging in semantics and quibbling between 'promise' and 'promise to consider' are not the defence that the Commission expects a person holding a high political office to take shelter under," it said in a letter to the chief secretary.
The chief secretary had said on Monday that the chief minister had made no "specific promises" during her electioneering but only assured that some of the long-pending demands of the people would be considered by her government.
The full Commission "regretfully conveys its disapproval" of the actions taken by the chief minister in offering projects to the electorate on the eve of elections, when the model code of conduct was in force and was "constrained" to observe that this could only have been made to obtain electoral gains", the EC letter said.
By-election to the Sattankulam assembly constituency is being held on Wednesday.