The election Commission has rejected allegations of delay in issuing notices to the Congress leaders, including its president Sonia Gandhi, for violating the code of conduct and dismissed reports of differences between its members on the Sohrabuddin Sheikh issue.
“The Commission acts on the basis of complaints during elections. We received a proper complaint from the BJP against Ms Sonia Gandhi only on December 6. The earlier complaints were not proper, as they were newspaper clippings,” chief election commissioner N. Gopalaswami said.
He said there was no delay in looking into any complaints, including those against Congress leader Digvijay Singh and BJP leader VK Malhotra.
Flanked by colleagues SY Quraishi and Navin Chawla, the CEC described as false a report appearing in an English daily that the panel had decided to issue notices to Sonia and deferred the decision on Modi’s reply by a 2:1 split vote.
On when the EC would take a decision on the Sohrabuddin issue, Chawla said: “We received the reply on Saturday evening. Our legal experts are examining it. We would probably look at it on Wednesday, after we get back.”