The Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour is urg­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties and prospec­tive can­di­dates to re­frain from us­ing State re­sources as part of their cam­paigns. This comes af­ter the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh’s al­leged dis­tri­b­u­tion of Min­istry of Health (MoH) wa­ter bot­tles dur­ing his elec­tion walk­a­bouts.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) wrote to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on Mon­day, stat­ing that it had learnt the bot­tles were part of an MoH TTMoves ini­tia­tive, with MPs be­ing al­lo­cat­ed 100 each. It ac­cused Deyals­ingh of “bla­tant at­tempt at elec­tion­eer­ing.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, coun­cil chair­man Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath stressed that State re­sources should not be used to the ad­van­tage of an in­cum­bent MP. How­ev­er, he not­ed that if the bot­tles were in­deed part of an MoH ini­tia­tive and used ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, there would be no eth­i­cal vi­o­la­tion.