Bangkok: Newly elected Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was accused of buying votes with noodles, a media report said Saturday.
The Election Commission has launched a probe into a complaint that Yingluck was handing out dishes with noodles she helped to cook, which can be classified as vote-buying, the Bangkok Post said.
"There was no distribution of free food nor any attempts to buy votes as alleged," the Nation Thai daily quoted Yingluck's Pheu Thai Party spokesman Prompong Nopparit as saying.
He added that cooking was organised to attract the crowd and not be construed as a vote-buying.
"Preliminary results from the investigation show it was not an act of intending to cook the noodles to give them to supporters because a noodle vendor was cooking when Yingluck arrived and she asked if she could help her with the cooking," the Commission's secretary-general Suthipol Thaweechaikarn told Bangkok Post.
Yingluck, 44, is the first woman elected for a premier post in Thailand.
Puea Thai won 265 of parliament's 500 seats, but later smaller parties announced they were joining Puea Thai, giving it control of 300 seats.
