New Delhi: The Election Commission took cognizance of alleged model code of conduct violations by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. The poll panel has sought responses from both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party by April 29.
In its letter to BJP president Jagat Prakash Nadda, the Election Commission said that the star campaigners are expected to contribute to a ‘higher quality of discourse, inter alia, by way of providing an all-India perspective, which sometimes gets distorted in the heat of the contests at the local level’.
The EC directed Nadda to inform all the star campaigners in his party of the high standards of political discourse expected from them. It asked the BJP chief to respond by 11 am on April 29 on the complaints raised by Congress, CPI and CPI (ML).
The Congress and other two opposition parties had moved the EC against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remark in Banswara in Rajasthan. During a rally, the prime minister had said,”The Congress manifesto says they will calculate the gold with mothers and sisters, and then distribute that property. They will distribute it to whom – Manmohan Singh’s government had said that Muslims have the first right on the country’s assets.”
“Earlier, when their (Congress) government was in power, they had said that Muslims have the first right on the country’s assets. This means to whom will this property be distributed? It will be distributed among those who have more children. It will be distributed to the infiltrators. Should your hard-earned money go to the infiltrators? Do you approve of this?” Modi had said.
In its letter to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, the Election Commission also directed him to convey the same message to the grand old party’s star campaigners about the quality of discourse expected from them. It also attached a copy of the complaint lodged by the BJP against Gandhi.
The BJP quoted excerpts from Gandhi’s purported speech in Kerala’s Kottayam where he allegedly said, “If a daughter graduates from a university, her parents congratulate in Malayalam. When a brother loses the other brother, he communicates in Malayalam. Thus, Kerala is Malayalam, Malayalam is Kerala”.
“I hear PM giving speeches where he says one nation, one language, and one religion. How can you tell people of Tamil to not speak Tamil, people of Kerala to not speak Malayalam?” he allegedly said.
