The Election Commission today asked BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi to explain his comment terming the Congress election symbol a “khooni panja (bloodied hand). It also ordered Congress vice-president to be more "circumspect" in his future speeches.
The Election Commission on Wednesday asked BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi to explain his comment terming the Congress election symbol a “khooni panja (bloodied hand). It also ordered Congress vice-president to be more "circumspect" in his future speeches.
Issuing two separate orders at the same time and trying to maintain political neutrality, the EC issued a mild reprimand to Gandhi for saying Pakistan’s ISI had attempted to woo Muslim youths whose kin had been killed during Muzzafarnagar communal riots in September.
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Gandhi had also accused BJP of inciting the communal clashes.
“Some portions of your speeches were not in consonance with the letter and spirit of the model code of conduct that prohibits speeches or statements likely to sharpen differences between different religious communities," the EC order said.
"It also prohibits criticism of other political parties on the basis of unverified allegations,” the order added.
Expressing its displeasure over the use of words, the commission said it advises Gandhi to be more circumspect in his public utterances during election campaigns.
The commission restrained itself from using strong words such as censure or warning to Gandhi.
Gandhi had said in his reply to the EC notice that his intention was to maintain communal harmony and his criticism of the BJP was based on the saffron party’s “stated policy”.
While accepting the spirit of Gandhi's speeches was to foster and promote communal harmony, the poll watchdog took exception to the tone, tenor and content of the impugned portions of his speech, saying it violated the model code of conduct.
At the same time, the commission asked Modi to explain his remark terming the Congress election symbol, hand, as "khooni panja (bloodied hand)".
The EC held Modi prima facie guilty of making an unverifiable allegation against the Congress under the model code of conduct.
The code allows political parties to criticise opponents on policies, programmes and past record but not on something that cannot be substantiated.
Asking Modi to submit a reply by November 16, the EC said it had obtained a CD of his speech on November 7 at Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh. The contents of the speech, he said, substantiated the Congress complaint.
The Congress on Sunday had accused Modi of violating the code by asking voters not to vote for the hand he described “bloodied”.
Modi had said, "When Atal Behari Vajpayee formed Chhattisgarh, whose hands did it first go into...Do you want such a "khooni panja" (bloodied hand) again...even by mistake, don't ever let Chhattisgarh go into the hands of a 'zalim panja' (cruel hands)."
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
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