Supreme Court seeks Election Commission’s response on Narendra Modi and Amit Shah’s ‘violation of model code of conduct’; poll panel gives clean chit to PM  

Narendra Modi.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court, on Tuesday, sought the Election Commission’s response on a plea filed by Congress MP Sushmita Dev, alleging model code of conduct violations by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the BJP chief, Amit Shah, over their alleged hate speeches and using armed forces for “political propaganda”.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said it would hear the plea, on Thursday, alleging inaction by EC in deciding complaints against Modi and Shah. Earlier, there were reports that the poll panel officials would sit, on Tuesday, to decide complaints of violations of MCC by various leaders, including the prime minister, the BJP chief and Congress president Rahul Gandhi, during campaigning for the Lok Sabha election.

However, later the bench consisting Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna said that it would not hear the fresh miscellaneous petition and it would be dealt by the appropriate bench. As a result, the plea was again taken up by the bench headed by the CJI. In the plea, Dev has alleged that “inaction” by EC on complaints against top BJP leaders was “a sign of invidious discrimination” as also “arbitrary, capricious and impermissible” as it was destructive of the integrity of electoral process.

Dev in the plea clearly listed out several alleged instances of MCC violations by Modi and Shah in their meetings and referred to as the first violation the speech of Modi at a rally at Wardha, Maharashtra, on April 1 where he had allegedly raised the issue of “bhagva aatankwad” (saffron terror). Modi had said: “Leaders of that party are now scared of contesting from constituencies dominated by majority (Hindu) population. That is why they are forced to take refuge in places where the majority is in a minority.”

EC clean shit to Modi

Meanwhile, the Election Commission held that Modi’s speech at Maharashtra's Wardha, where he accused the Congress of insulting the Hindus through its party chief Rahul Gandhi’s candidature from Kerala’s Wayanad, does not violate the model code of conduct. This is the first time the poll panel decided on the several complaints pending against the prime minister.

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