The Election Commission has asked the Centre to stop sending out Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s March 15 “open letter” over WhatsApp, after many voters, and even foreigners, had already received it.

The letter is being sent from a WhatsApp account of the Union ministry of electronics and IT.

Use of State machinery to promote the government is prohibited after the declarations of polls. Although parliamentary polls were declared a day after the Prime Minister wrote his letter addressed to “family members” calling for “ideas, suggestions and support”, the messages continued to be sent from the ministry’s Viksit Bharat Sampark account.

The EC had received a letter from the ministry on March 16 itself, which it quoted in its order to the ministry on Thursday, saying: “It was informed in that letter that though the letters were sent out before MCC (Model Code of Conduct) period, but due to system architecture and network limitations it is possible that some letters have a delayed delivery.”

The poll panel added: “The Commission has received complaints from various quarters that such messages are still being delivered on citizens’ phones. Since the MCC is now in force, you are hereby directed to ensure forthwith that no further delivery of ‘WhatsApp messages’ take place during MCC period. A compliance report in this regard may be sent immediately.”

Chandigarh’s returning officer had found the letter a prima facie violation of the MCC and written to the EC. The Congress and Trinamul had also complained.

The Congress met the EC on Thursday with several complaints. In addition to the letter, it included government advertisements that are still being displayed in trains and petrol stations, tweets by the ministry of information and broadcasting promoting the Prime Minister, an ad of the BJP defaming the Manmohan Singh government over the 2G scam for which it has been exonerated in court, as well as an offensive Facebook post by the Odisha BJP targeting Rahul Gandhi.