A little over half an hour before polling ended for the third phase, the Election Commission (EC) released a letter reminding X to “immediately” remove a cartoon posted by “BJP4Karnataka” showing Muslims being fed apparently by Congress leaders and edging out backward classes.

The EC’s reminder came two days after the Karnataka police wrote to X to remove the “offensive content” found by Karnataka’s chief electoral officer to be violating the Model Code of Conduct and Section 123(3) of The Representation of The People Act, 1951 — which criminalises seeking votes on the basis of “religion, race, caste, community or language”.

An FIR has also been filed against Karnataka BJP president B.Y. Vijayendra. The post had still not been removed when this report was filed. Fourteen seats in Karnataka had polling on Tuesday.

The EC has come under severe criticism for the post remaining online for the last three days. Previously it had sent a notice to the BJP for the PM’s speech in Rajasthan claiming that the Congress was going to redistribute private wealth among Muslims. This was itself out of the ordinary as the violator gets the primary notice and the liability of the party is secondary. A similar notice was sent to the Congress as well for a speech by Rahul Gandhi claiming that the BJP was trying to “divide the
country”.

The BJP has reportedly not replied to the EC yet, while the Congress has responded. No action has been taken by the EC yet.

On Tuesday, the poll panel stopped the Congress government in Telangana from paying farmers their input subsidy under the Rythu Bharosa scheme. The payment is made for farmers during cropping seasons — which ordinarily do not fall during this time of the year in the state, and thus was alleged to be undue influence on voters by the party in power.