The Congress on Monday raised a batch of complaints before the Election Commission against alleged violations of the Model Code of Conduct by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, including his remark that the Opposition party’s manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls “reflects the Muslim League’s ideology and every page reeks of breaking India into pieces”.
Modi had made the remarks at an election rally in Ajmer on Saturday.
“The Leftists have taken over whatever was left of this manifesto bearing the stamp of the Muslim League,” Modi said. “Today, Congress is left with neither principles nor policies. It seems as if Congress has given everything on contract and has outsourced the entire party.”
On Monday, a delegation of Congress leaders comprising former Union minister Salman Khurshid, Rajya Sabha MP Mukul Wasnik, Pawan Khera and Gurdeep Sappal met with officials from the poll panel.
The party told the Election Commission that Modi’s comments were in direct and complete violation of the Model Code of Conduct and also constituted an offence punishable under provisions of the Indian Penal Code section 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), reported The Indian Express.
“By propagating false, uninformed and vexatious claims, Shri Narendra Modi has attempted to evoke an emotional response from the electorate by using the horrors of Partition in a bid to polarise voters,” the party alleged. “Such instances of calculated and malicious comments…are nothing out of the ordinary but rather a part of the larger party-wide concerted effort of arousing communal discord to secure a larger vote share.”
The party requested the poll body to take action against Modi for his comments.
“It is very sad that in his speeches Narendra Modi has called the Congress manifesto a bundle of lies,” Khurshid told reporters on Monday. “You can have differences with any party, but it is sad to say such a thing about the manifesto of a national level party. PM Modi also said that this seems to be the manifesto of those parties who are opposing the freedom of our secular society.”
The prime minister, meanwhile, reiterated his remarks on Monday during an election rally in Chhattisgarh, reported India Today.
Responding to Modi’s remarks, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said that the political and “ideological ancestors” of the prime minister and home minister Amit Shah had supported the British Raj and the Muslim League in opposing the Indian freedom struggle.
The Rajya Sabha MP was referring to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which did not participate in the movement for Independence.
“Even today, they are invoking the Muslim League against the ‘Congress Nyay Patra’ guided and shaped according to the aspirations, needs and demands of common Indians,” Kharge said in a social media post. “Modi-Shah's ideological ancestors opposed Mahatma Gandhi's call for ‘Quit India’ in 1942, which was the movement chaired by Maulana Azad.”
Kharge said that it is well-known that former Union minister Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, who founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (the predecessor of the BJP) formed his governments in Bengal, Sindh and North West Frontier Province in the 1940s in coalition with the Muslim League.
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