NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress on Monday sought more time to respond to notices issued to presidents of the two parties last week over complaints that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Member of Parliament (MP) Rahul Gandhi had violated the model code of conduct, an Election Commission of India (ECI) official said.
The ECI, which issued separate notices to the president of the two parties for allegations against their star campaigners on April 25, required BJP’s JP Nadda and Congress’s Mallikarjun Kharge to respond to the notices by 11am on Monday.
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An ECI official said the BJP has asked for another week to send its response. The Congress initially sought time till 5pm on Monday, but later sought an extension for 14 days.
The notices came days after PM Modi’s comments at an election rally in Rajasthan on Sunday that the Congress intended to redistribute public wealth to Muslims. Opposition leaders targeted Modi over the comments. Kharge called the remarks “hate speech”, and said that Modi had “lowered the dignity of political discourse”.
In the notice to BJP chief JP Nadda, ECI cited the representations of the Congress, the Communist Party of India (CPI), and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation or CPI(ML). “You [Nadda] are also directed, as president of the national party to bring to the notice of all your star campaigners to set high standards of political discourse and observe provisions of MCC in letter and spirit,” the notice said.
The notice to Kharge referred to the BJP’s representation. It sought a response to the complaint against Rahul Gandhi’s April 18 speech in Kerala in which he had said that Modi was giving speeches advocating an idea for “one nation, one language, one religion”. The BJP accused Gandhi of “derisive and obnoxious utterances” against Modi.
ECI’s notices did not mention relevant sections of MCC or the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that have been violated even though the attached complaints do. Neither notice mentions Modi or Gandhi by name.
The two notices were a break from departure because ECI usually sends notices directly to the campaigner concerned.
