The Congress on Thursday lodged a complaint with the Election Commission against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly invoking Hindu gods during his election rallies in Karnataka.

Leaders of the party’s legal cell have appealed to the poll panel to restrain Modi from seeking votes in the name of gods and goddesses.

The Prime Minister is scheduled to return to the state on Saturday for a three-day campaign ahead of the May 10 polls.

Addressed to the chief electoral officer of Karnataka, the complaint accuses Modi of chanting “Jai Bajrang Bali” at a BJP rally in Uttara Kannada district on Wednesday.

Modi has been repeatedly invoking Bajrang Bali (Hanuman) since the Congress promised in its manifesto, released on Tuesday, to ban the Bajrang Dal and other organisations that spread hate.

While Modi has portrayed this as an affront to Hanuman himself, Congress leaders have demanded an apology from him for “insulting” Bajrang Bali by comparing him to a Sangh parivar outfit.

The complaint to the poll panel accuses the Prime Minister of attempting “to portray the Congress party as anti-Hindu by taking name of most revered god of Hindu’s Lord Hanuman i.e., ‘Jai Bhajarangi bali’ only with intention of soliciting votes for BJP party and urging people to not vote for Congress party”.

It invokes the Model Code of Conduct, which says that no party or candidate shall indulge in “any activity which may aggravate existing difference or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious and linguistic”.

The complaint quotes from an Election Commission circular, issued in 2017 and based on a Supreme Court judgment against the use of religion in electioneering.

“An appeal in the name of religion, race, caste, community or language is impossible under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and would constitute a corrupt practice sufficient to annul the election in which such an appeal was made regardless whether the appeal was in the name of the candidate’s religion or the religion of the election agent or that of the opponent or that of the voter’s,” the complaint quotes the circular as saying.

The BJP has continued with its campaign to portray the Congress promise to ban the Bajrang Dal as an insult to Hindus and Hanuman.

While Bajrang Dal members held protests on Wednesday, the BJP and its Sangh parivar allies organised recitations of the Hanuman Chalisa across the state on Thursday.