Hate speeches have ruled politics ahead of the 2014 elections, with the BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi being most targeted of them all. The EC, after some initial dithering, has cracked the whip on erring leaders.
Hate speeches have ruled politics ahead of the 2014 elections, with the BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi being most targeted of them all. The EC, after some initial dithering, has cracked the whip on erring leaders.
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Almost half the complaints received are about hate speeches – ranging from describing a leader as relative of a puppy and stripping opposition leaders to chopping someone.
“No election was as bad as this one,” election commissioner HS Brahma said. He feels that the leaders were exploiting the limitation of the model code of conduct that has not been revised since 1997.
But experts feel the EC has not been stern enough to check hate speeches.
“The EC has powers to derecognise a party and withdraw its symbol,” said former CEC N Gopalaswami, hours before it banned the BJP’s Amit Shah and the SP’s Azam Khan from campaigning in UP. The commission has also directed the state to register cases against them.
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TS Krishnamurthy, former CEC, accepted that the hate speeches had been the hallmark of this election and the EC didn’t act fast. Khan’s is a case in point. The commission took time in seeking an explanation from him for communally attacking Modi and his protégé Amit Shah in western UP.
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TS Krishnamurthy, former CEC, accepted that the hate speeches had been the hallmark of this election and the EC didn’t act fast. Khan’s is a case in point. The commission took time in seeking an explanation from him for communally attacking Modi and his protégé Amit Shah in western UP.
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Observers also point out the action against Shah and Khan has come late and may have no meaning now.
“Their political purpose has been served. They have polarised the Muslim and Hindu votes,” said CP Bhambri, former professor of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The Congress has taken a lead in filing complaints to the EC with an average of one every working day. They include objections to BJP releasing its manifesto on a poll date and Modi participating in a yoga camp organised by Ramdev.
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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