E-Paper
EC sends notice to BJP, Congress presidents over complaints during Maha campaign
The notice to BJP’s JP Nadda was sent in response to two complaints filed by the Congress while the notice to Congress’ Mallikarjun Kharge was in response to a complaint filed by the BJP
The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday sent notices to the presidents of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, seeking their responses on complaints received during the ongoing assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
The notice to BJP’s JP Nadda was sent in response to two complaints filed by the Congress on November 13 while the notice to Congress’ Mallikarjun Kharge was in response to a complaint filed by the BJP.
Both Nadda and Kharge have been instructed to submit their responses by 1pm on November 18.
The Congress’ complaint alleged that BJP star campaigner and prime minister Narendra Modi had made “a series of false, malicious, and slanderous statements” during his election rallies in Nasik and Dhule on November 8. In these speeches, Modi said that Congress leaders and former prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were against reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs. He accused Rahul Gandhi, referred to as “yuvraj” (crown prince) in his speech, of “continuing the same game”. Modi made similar remarks on November 12 at an election rally in Chandrapur.
The second complaint alleged that BJP star campaigner and Union home minister Amit Shah had made statements “in violation of provisions of the Model Code of Conduct as well as extant electoral laws” by seeking votes for the BJP by “stoking communal insecurity”. The Congress said that in an election rally in Dhanbad on November 12, Shah had made “a slew of false, divisive, malicious, and slanderous statements” about Congress and its allies, and said that they were against scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and Other Backward Classes.
“In what has become a common narrative across the BJP’s campaign in Jharkhand, Mr. Amit Shah has also accused the INC (Indian National Congress) of planning to take away reservations from members of the ST, SC and OBC communities and granting them to members of a particular religious minority community,” Congress said.
In both complaints, Congress highlighted objectionable Twitter/X and Facebook posts by official BJP accounts.
The BJP, on the other hand, had filed its November 11 complaint against Congress’s Rahul Gandhi’s November 6 speech made in Mumbai where he had said that the BJP government had set up the manufacturing units of Apple’s iPhones and Boeing’s airplanes in other states at the expense of the state of Maharashtra, thereby taking away about 500,000 jobs from the state. The BJP has sought the ECI to reprimand Gandhi and to register an FIR against him and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.
The BJP also accused Gandhi of using region, caste and religion “to create a rift between the citizens of India” for electoral gains, and cited ECI’s March 2024 advisory that discouraged such acts.
