The Election Commission of India has issued notices to the BJP and the Congress over speeches made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi in Rajasthan and Kerala, but not revealed whether the two heavyweight campaigners were sent notices as well.
Ordinarily, suspected violators of the Model Code of Conduct receive a notice from the poll panel. In the current elections, party leaders of the suspects have also additionally received notices. While no exemption exists for senior politicians, the commission is not known to have ever issued a notice to a Prime Minister.
In 1975, when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was disqualified as MP, it was Allahabad High Court and not the poll panel that punished her for misuse of the state machinery for electioneering.
The Election Commission's notice to BJP president J.P. Nadda says: "… Star Campaigners are expected to contribute to a higher quality of discourse, inter alia, by way of providing an all-India perspective, which sometimes gets distorted in the heat of the contests at the local level…. The Commission has taken a view that while the individual star campaigner would continue to remain responsible for speeches made, the Commission will address party President/ Head of the political party, on case-to-case basis."
The poll panel's action comes a day before the second phase of the polls, and after it faced severe public lampooning and a barrage of complaints against Modi’s speech in Rajasthan on Sunday.
Modi had alleged without proof that the Congress manifesto pledged to "survey" and "attach" citizens' properties and distribute them disproportionately among Muslims, "who have more children". The Congress has denied the accusation but the Prime Minister and other BJP campaigners have been repeating the claim.
The notice asks Nadda to respond by 11am on Monday to complaints from the Congress, CPI and the CPIML Liberation against Modi’s speech in Banswara, Rajasthan.
Rahul Gandhi in Solapur on Wednesday. PTI picture
A similarly worded notice with the same reply deadline was sent to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on a BJP complaint against Rahul’s April 18 speech in Kottayam.
Rahul was quoted as saying: "I get surprised when I hear the PM giving speeches where he says one nation, one language, and one religion. How can you tell people of Tamil to not speak Tamil, people of Kerala to not speak Malayalam, people.... Every single Indian language is as important as any other language.
"BJP does this with language, place, caste and religion. Whenever they get an opportunity, they divide the country.”
The BJP has also demanded an FIR against Rahul and Kharge based on its previous complaints. These relate, among others, to Kharge’s claims that he wasn’t invited to the Ayodhya temple inauguration and that the BJP would change the Constitution if elected to power. In its complaint, the BJP called Kharge a “pathological liar and habitual offender”.
Congress communications head Jairam Ramesh tweeted: “Is this what the EC means by a ‘level playing field’? It is clear that public pressure, motivated by the PM’s outrageous remarks, have forced the EC’s hand.... By equating the two, the EC has drawn attention to its own compulsions. By any standard, the equivalence is bizarre and completely unwarranted and unjustified. Meanwhile, BJP candidates brazenly continue to use religious symbols in their election campaign.”
The last time Modi faced Election Commission action was during the 2014 polls, when the panel ordered that he be booked for displaying his party symbol outside a polling booth in Ahmedabad after voting.
The police gave Modi a clean chit, which an Ahmedabad court accepted and dropped the proceedings soon after Modi became Prime Minister.
More than 16 lakh polling staff have been deployed for Friday’s polls, to be held across 88 seats in 12 states and one Union Territory.
Some 15.88 crore people will be eligible to vote at 1.67 lakh polling booths, amid concerns about a possible dip in the turnout because of heat as was seen in the first phase on April 19.
The voting timings have been extended to 6pm in many booths of four seats in Bihar that vote on Friday. Polling in the Madhya Pradesh constituency of Betul, scheduled initially for Friday, has been postponed to May 7 (third phase) after a BSP candidate died.
The key contests on Friday include Rahul versus the CPI’s Annie Raja in Wayanad, Kerala; and Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar versus Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in Thiruvananthapuram.
Among the other important candidates are former Karnataka chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy in Mandya and former Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel in Rajnandgaon.
In 2019, the BJP won 52 of these seats, the Congress 18, and the Janata Dal United and the Shiv Sena 4 each.
Among the BJP’s prominent candidates this time are Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla who are contesting from Jodhpur and Kota, respectively, in Rajasthan; actors Hema Malini and Arun Govil from Mathura and Meerut, respectively, in Uttar Pradesh; and Navneet Rana from Amravati in Maharashtra.
