Former Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi violated the Model Code of Conduct by calling the recent militant attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch a “poll stunt” to help the Bharatiya Janata Party win the Lok Sabha elections, the state’s Chief Electoral Officer Sibin C said on Tuesday, PTI reported.
The Model Code of Conduct is a set of rules issued by the Election Commission that all political parties, candidates and governments are mandated to follow during an election campaign. The code sets guardrails for speech.
“According to a report of the Jalandhar district election officer, it [Channi’s remark] is the violation of MCC [model code of conduct],'” Sibin C told PTI on Tuesday.
Channi has been fielded by the Congress from the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency.
The electoral officer has written to the Election Commission for further action on the matter, PTI reported.
On May 4, one Indian Air Force staffer was killed and four others were injured in the Union territory’s Poonch district after militants fired at their vehicles.
A day later, while responding to a reporter’s question about the attack, Channi alleged that the “BJP knows how to play with people’s lives and bodies”. “Whenever elections are near, such stunts are performed to make the BJP win,” he had claimed.
BJP Punjab chief Sunil Jakhar had called Channi’s remarks an “insult to [the] nation”. Jakhar had asked the Congress to “disassociate from his [Channi’s] statement and ask him to apologise to the nation immediately”.
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