Election watch: EC says Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi did not violate Model Code of Conduct

10.50 pm: Here are the top stories from the day:

• The Election Commission said Narendra Modi did not violate the Model Code of Conduct during his speech in Barmer town in Rajasthan on April 21. The poll panel also cleared Rahul Gandhi of poll code allegations for calling Amit Shah a ‘murder accused’.
• Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said that she “would rather die” than benefit the BJP. Her comments come a day after she had said that the Congress has fielded candidates in Uttar Pradesh that would cut into the BJP’s votes. Meanwhile, 
• Congress President Rahul Gandhi said that his party is helping the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance in Uttar Pradesh in constituencies where it lacks strong candidates.   
• The Supreme Court directed the Election Commission to decide on a petition that sought an early start to polls in the upcoming phases of the Lok Sabha elections as Ramzan begins. The religious month of Ramzan, which Muslims observe by fasting, is expected to begin on May 5.
• Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the United Progressive Alliance government had conducted “multiple surgical strikes” but did not believe in using them to win votes.
• Congress leader and former Union minister Rajiv Shukla claimed that the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance government had conducted several surgical strikes across the border into Pakistan between 2008 and 2014.  

10.35 pm: The Chief Electoral Office, Delhi, seeks replies from three AAP leaders, including party chief Arvind Kejriwal, for their tweets asking people not to “waste their votes” by voting for BJP candidates Gautam Gambhir and Ramesh Bidhuri as they were going to be disqualified sooner or later, PTI reports. The other AAP leaders to get notices were Atishi Marlena and Raghav Chadha.

Gambhir is pitted against Marlena and Arvinder Singh Lovely of the Congress for the East Delhi seat. Bidhuri is locked in a triangular contest with Chadha and Congress candidate Vijender Singh for the south Delhi seat.

10.31 pm: Senior BJP leader and Union minister Vijay Goel claims his party was in touch with 14 AAP legislators in Delhi who wanted to leave the ruling party due to “frustration and humiliation”.

10.25 pm: The Telangana Congress says a delegation of its leaders will take up with the Election Commission on Friday the alleged anomalies found by the party in the polling held for the Lok Sabha elections on April 11, PTI reports. There was a significant increase in the percentage of polled votes after 5 pm, the party alleges.

10.12 pm: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi claims that the listing of Masood Azhar as a terrorist by the UN was a “cosmetic thing” as there was no mention of Pathankot, Uri and other terror attacks listing, PTI reports. At a rally in Hyderabad, he alleges that Narendra Modi compromised in the matter, and asked what agreement the government made with China on the matter.

10.04 pm: The Delhi Chief Electoral Office has directed all FM channels and news channels to get political content on their platforms pre-certified, PTI reports. The channels have also been urged to share the content they receive from political parties with the Delhi poll panel.

10 pm: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal urges people to choose their representative in Parliament wisely, PTI reports. At a rally in Trilokpuri area with AAP’s East Delhi candidate Atishi Marlena, he says that if BJP’s candidate Gautam Gambhir gets elected he would be playing cricket abroad.

9.52 pm: Narendra Modi’s rally in Chaibasa, Jharkhand on May 5 has been deferred by a day due to the possibility of the impact of Cyclone Fani in the area, PTI reports. A proposed rally of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath, set to be held on May 5 at Gopal Maidan in Jamshedpur has also been postponed.

9.45 pm: Election Commission issues notice to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath for referring to a Samajwadi Party candidate as “Babar ki aulad” during a speech in Sambhal district on April 19. The poll panel has asked him to reply within 24 hours.

8.46 pm: Congress leader P Chidambaram says in a tweet that the party is happy that Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar has been designated a global terrorist by the United Nations. However, he adds that it was the BJP government that released Azhar in 1999 following the IC 814 plane hijack. “But why does the Prime Minister of Pakistan want Modi to continue as Prime Minister of India?” he asked.

8.40 pm: The Election Commission says Narendra Modi did not violate the Model Code of Conduct in his speech in Barmer, Rajasthan on April 21, where he said India is not scared of Pakistan’s nuclear threats any more, ANI reports. “Every other day they used to say, ‘We have nuclear button, we have nuclear button’,” the prime minister had said. “What do we have then? Have we kept it for Diwali?”

8.31 pm: Senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi says in Raebareli that the vote is a “strong weapon” in the hands of people, ANI reports. She asks voters to remember what Narendra Modi had promised, and asserted that the reality had been different. Gandhi is the Congress’ candidate for Raebareli, which will vote on May 6.

8.26 pm: Congress leader Sheila Dikshit says that the Aam Aadmi Party is confined to Delhi, and therefore there was no point in forming an alliance with it, PTI reports. “All our candidates are contesting,” she adds. “If alliance had happened, we would have got 2-4 seats only.”

8.15 pm: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights issues notice to Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra stating that a video showed children shouting slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in her presence, ANI reports. The commission says it has apprised the Election Commission of the complaint.

The commission says for the purpose of inquiry, the details of the children and where the sloganeering happened needs to be submitted within three days.

7.30 pm: The Election Commission clears Rahul Gandhi of poll code violation on his speech in April where he called BJP chief Amit Shah a “murder accused”, reports say. “The matter has been examined in accordance with extant advisories, Model Code of Conduct and after examining of transcript of speech, the EC is of the view that MCC was not violated,” the poll panel says.

Addressing a rally in Jabalpur district of Madhya Pradesh, Gandhi had allegedly said, “Murder accused BJP chief Amit Shah, how glorious!”

7.01 pm: The Delhi Chief Electoral Officer has written to the Election Commission after the BJP sought permission to air two movies – Padman and Toilet: Ek Prem Katha – on NaMo TV, reports PTI. The Delhi poll body has sought clarity about certifying movies already cleared by the censor board. Both the movies star Akshay Kumar, who recently interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Read more here:

NaMo TV will have to follow ‘silence period’ ahead of polling day as per election law, says EC

6.48 pm: Union minister Jayant Sinha, who is the BJP candidate from Hazaribagh constituency in Jharkhand, tells BBC Hindi that he along with other party members bore the legal expenses to help convicts in the Alimuddin Ansari lynching case get bail. Last year, Sinha had expressed regret for garlanding the eight men.

Sinha is contesting the elections against Congress’s Gopal Sahu. The constituency will going to polls in the fifth phase on May 6.

6.28 pm: Congress leader and former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit tells PTI in an interview that she opposed her party’s alliance with the AAP because it is confined only in Delhi. “The Congress is an old party,” she says. “It has always fought on its own in Delhi and won [elections] more often than it lost.” She refuses to speculate on the number of seats the party will win in the national capital.

6.15 pm: Union minister and BJP leader Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore dismisses the Congress’s claim that six surgical strikes were carried out when it was in power. “I was in the Army and I know what happened,” ANI quotes Rathore as saying. “The entire Army is now standing with the Bharatiya Janata Party and Modi ji. It did not happen overnight.”

6.08 pm: Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is addressing a rally in Barrackpore’s Palta locality. “In North 24 Parganas district, you know it is election season when BJP starts talking about Ram,” News18 quotes her as saying. “They have failed to build the Ram temple. Even the Ganga ghats in Varanasi have not been cleansed.”

5.45 pm: The Congress president tells NDTV that secular forces in Uttar Pradesh will crush the BJP in the elections. “The Congress is not dividing the vote, we are harming the BJP,” he adds.

5.40 pm: Rahul Gandhi tells NDTV that he was ready to override his party’s opposition to an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi. “We spoke to Arvind Kejriwal [Delhi chief minister], and he agreed for an alliance but then he brought Punjab and Haryana in the scene,” he says. “The problem was that Mr Kejriwal was shifting goalposts.”

5.30 pm: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal shares a tweet in which state Social Welfare Minister Rajendra Pal Gautam claimed that BJP’s North West Delhi candidate Hans Raj Hans is ineligible to contest from the seat, which is reserved for people from Scheduled Caste communities, as according to media reports Raj had converted to Islam in 2014.

“Hans Raj Hans is ineligible to fight from a reserved seat,” says Kejriwal. “He will finally be declared ineligible. Voters from North West Delhi should not waste their votes on him.”

5.18 pm: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee says at a campaign for Barrackpore MP and Trinamool Congress candidate Dinesh Trivedi that voters should remember that the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny started in Barrackpore. “Sepoy Mutiny was the first uprising against the British in India,” PTI quotes her as saying. “Now the biggest threat and problem in the country is Narendra Modi.” Trivedi is contesting the elections against the BJP’s Arjun Singh.

4.44 pm: Congress leader Rajiv Shukla claims the armed forces conducted six surgical strikes when the Manmohan Singh government was in power. “One was conducted on June 19, 2008, in Bhattal sector in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch, one from August 30 to September 1, 2011, in Sharda sector across the Neelam River Valley in Kel,” ANI quotes him as saying.

According to Shukla, one surgical strike was carried out on January 6, 2013, at Sawan Patra checkpost, and another on July 27 and July 28, 2013, in Nazapir sector. The fifth and sixth strikes were conducted in Neelam Valley on August 6, 2013, and January 14, 2014, the Congress leader adds.

4.35 pm: The Election Commission has removed Tripura West Lok Sabha seat’s Returning Officer Sandeep Mahatme from election duty and appointed Vikash Singh in his place, reports News18.

4.26 pm: BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao says that the people of Uttar Pradesh know the games that the SP, the BSP and the Congress play. “Today after this big drama, the people have realised that these parties are in favour of a weak government at the Centre. They have formed an alliance to practise their politics of corruption. It is part of the Congress’s conspiracy to establish a weak government in the country.”

4.21 pm: BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao says Priyanka Gandhi’s statement that the Congress was putting up candidates in Uttar Pradesh to cut into the BJP’s votes shows that her party too is a part of the SP-BSP-RLD alliance.

“After this public disclosure, we can see the bewilderment in the SP-BSP alliance,” he adds. “These parties are interested in forming a weak government, and want to derail India’s development. The SP and the BSP supported the Congress-led UPA government for 10 years, and now they are pretending to contest the elections on their own.”

Read more here:

Uttar Pradesh: Congress will cut into BJP’s votes, not mahagathbandhan’s, says Priyanka Gandhi

4.09 pm: The BJP’s Gurdaspur candidate Sunny Deol is holding a roadshow in the city, reports ANI. The Hindi film actor had joined the saffron party on April 23.

4.05 pm: Union minister and the BJP’s candidate from Chandi Chowk in Delhi, Harsh Vardhan, tells PTI that people’s faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision has not been shaken even though policies such as demonetisation and the implementation of Goods and Services Tax caused “some disturbances”.

“Although, for a small period of time, people had some small disturbances in handling cash and going to the banks for changing it,” Vardhan says. “Now everyone has realised that the PM had very pious intentions. Nobody has criticised it.”

3.58 pm: The Madhya Pradesh government was known for its roads full of potholes, erratic electricity supply and corruption when the Congress was in power 15 years back, says Amit Shah. “Shivraj Singh Chouhan turned around Madhya Pradesh from a BIMARU state to a developed one.”

3.41 pm: Amit Shah takes a dig at the Congress at a public meeting in Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch town. “For 10 years, the Congress-led UPA government was in power,” he says. “At the time inflation was sky high. From the decisions that the UPA government took it seemed as if every minister considered himself or herself the prime mininster while totally disregarding the person holding the post.”

3.34 pm: BJP President Amit Shah has alleged that Congress President Rahul Gandhi goes abroad “to a place about which not even his mother knows” when the temperature in India goes up. “Modi ji is working tirelessly for the nation,” PTI quotes him as saying at a poll rally in Rajgarh district of Madhya Pradesh. “On the other hand, the Congress president goes on leave regularly and even his mother is unaware of his whereabouts.”

3.31 pm: Congress President Rahul Gandhi has said at an election rally in Jharkhand’s Simdega district that people are the masters in a democracy. “Do not forget that your are the ‘malik’ in democracy,” PTI quotes him as saying. “Narendra Modi, or for that matter any other leader, is not your master. You just tell us what to do and we will do it.”

3.19 pm: CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury has claimed that the BJP fielded “undertrial terror accused” Pragya Singh Thakur from Bhopal with the aim of consolidating the Hindutva votebank. According to PTI, in an article in the forthcoming issue of party mouthpiece People’s Democracy, Yechury has accused the the BJP and Narendra Modi of disrupting the unity of the country and its solidarity through a venomous campaign of communal polarisation.

3.09 pm: The Supreme Court has asked the Election Commission to decide before May 6 the Congress’s nine complaints against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah for alleged violations of the Model Code of Conduct, reports PTI.

2.46 pm: Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi tells ANI that she has never said that the Congress is putting up weak candidates in Utar Pradesh. “I have said very clearly Congress is fighting this election on its own strength,” she adds. “I would rather die than benefit the BJP. We have chosen candidates that are either fighting very strongly or cutting BJP votes.”

2.35 pm: Congress leader Manish Tewari has lodged a complaint with the Election Commission against social media users who have accused his father of being involved in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in New Delhi, reports PTI. According to Tewari – who is contesting the elections from Anandpur Sahib in Punjab – his father was assassinated by militants on April 3, 1984, six months before the riots.

2.29 pm: Asked if she is dejected about not contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Varanasi against Narendra Modi, Priyanka Gandhi tells PTI that she “feared no one” and followed her party’s directions. Gandhi says that it is important for her to strengthen the Congress in Uttar Pradesh and points out that she is campaigning not for herself but for the party’s candidates.

Read more here:

2019 Lok Sabha elections: Priyanka Gandhi says Congress chose not to field her in Varanasi

2.23 pm: Congress General Secretary for Uttar Pradesh East Priyanka Gandhi tells PTI that there is growing “public anger and pain” for which people will send a message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 23, when votes cast in the Lok Sabha polls are counted.

“Nationalism means solving the problems of the people of the country,” she says. “The greatest patriotism of any politician, of any government, would be to be able to hear the people when they speak, would be to be democratic, to be able to strengthen the institutions that strengthen the public voice, not weaken it.”

She says that “true nationalism is love of the people and love for the country” but adds that she does not see respect for people in anything that the BJP is doing.

2.11 pm: One jawan has been killed and another injured in a gunfight at a base of central forces in Bagnan in West Bengal’s Howrah district, reports NDTV. The security personnel have been deployed there ahead of Lok Sabha elections in Howrah constituency, which will vote on May 6 in the sixth phase of elections.

1.48 pm: Union minister Arun Jaitley claimed during his press conference in New Delhi that the Opposition parties are reluctant to celebrate the government’s achievement of blacklisting Masood Azhar because they feel they may have to pay a political price for it, reports PTI.

1.20 pm: Three women activists of the ruling CPI(M) in Kerala have been charged with bogus voting during elections in the Kasaragod Lok Sabha constituency on April 23, say the police. A case has been registered against NP Saleena, a member of the Cheruthazham panchayat, KP Sumayyah and Padmini on the basis of a complaint registered by the district collector, reports PTI.

1.15 pm: Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi says the Congress will emerge as the single-largest party after the elections. “I have no doubt a non-BJP multi-party group will be in power after May 23,” he tells PTI. “The exact complexion and numbers of that need not be talked about now.”

1.06 pm: Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman says that designating Masood Azhar a global terrorist shows that “terrorism shall not be tolerated”. She calls it a noteworthy move. “Persistent measures taken by the Ministry of External Affairs, under leadership of PM and his own visits have resulted in this,” ANI quotes her saying.

1.03 pm: Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley criticises the Opposition for questioning the Balakot air strikes and asking for proof. “Earlier, we had a tradition of speaking in a united voice on matters related to foreign policy and national security,” he says. “However, in recent times there has been a move away from this. It is unfortunate.”

12.57 pm: The Supreme Court has asked the Election Commission to decide on a petition seeking to advance polling time from 7 am to 5 am in the remaining phases of the Lok Sabha elections since they coincide with the month of Ramzan, reports Live Law.

12.52 pm: Lok Janshakti Party chief and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan Thursday has taken a dig at the Opposition, saying no one knows who its prime ministerial candidate is, PTI reports. “Who is the prime ministerial candidate of opposition alliance?” Paswan said at an election rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district on Wednesday evening. “No one knows this while in the BJP Narendra Modi is there. On the matter of PM, the Opposition alliance is divided.”

12.32 pm: Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien says the “fascist” Narendra Modi government is on its way out, and will be replaced by a government formed by a front of regional parties. “All the leaders and MPs [of constituent parties] would sit together and decide who would be their leader,” he tells PTI. “We would take just an hour to elect the leader of the front. The TMC would play the most important role in the next government.”

12.27 pm: Congress leader and former Union Minister P Chidambaram asks why Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan wants Narendra Modi to win the general elections.

“After Masood Azhar masterminded the Mumbai terror attack in 2008, the process to name him as a global terrorist was started by a Congress/UPA government in 2009,” he tweets. “We are happy that the process has concluded successfully in 2019. But why does the prime minister of Pakistan want Mr Modi to continue as prime minister of India?”

12.22 pm: Priyanka Gandhi tells reporters that the ideologies of the Congress and the BJP are poles apart. “We will always fight them, they are our main adversary in politics,” ANI quotes her as saying. “We have made sure not to benefit BJP in any way. We are fighting strongly, our candidates are strong.”

12.16 pm: Priyanka Gandhi met snake charmers in Rae Bareli earlier in the day and even held a snake, ANI reports.

12.03 pm: Priyanka Gandhi campaigns for her mother and UPA chief Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli, reports News18. “Congress has always worked for the people of the country, Sonia ji opened so many projects which would’ve benefitted the people,” says Priyanka Gandhi. “But ever since the BJP came to power, these projects were put on hold and the government never worked to complete the pending projects.”

11.51 am: Mayawati says it is condemnable that the BJP was trying to garner votes in the name of Masood Azhar, reports ANI.

11.49 am: BSP chief Mayawati accuses the BJP and the Congress of jointly fighting against the gathbandhan candidates. “Congress and BJP are cut from the same cloth,” she says, according to News18. “I urge voters to vote for the gathbandhan candidate instead of Congress and ensure that BJP’s defeat is certain. We all saw how Rahul hugged the PM in Parliament, both of them are evidently in collusion.”

11.34 am: The Kerala police book three women for electoral fraud, reports The Hindu. MV Salina, KP Sumayya and Padmini are believed Communist Party of India (Marxist) workers.

11.29 am: Omar Abdullah accuses Congress of ignoring Jammu and Kashmir. “It says a lot about the Congress party and its approach to J&K,” tweets Abdullah. “There hasn’t been a single election meeting by its leadership. Contrast this with the number of rallies addressed by Modi ji & Amit Shah. They may not have come to the valley but they didn’t ignore the state.”

11.27 am: The Supreme Court is likely hear the plea on Rahul Gandhi’s citizenship next week, reports News18.

11.14 am: Congress President Rahul Gandhi will be campaigning in Jharkhand and Rajasthan today. Priyanka Gandhi will continue her campaign in Rae Bareli. UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi will join her later in the day.

10.22 am: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights writes to the Election Commission regarding a video in which a group of children are purportedly heard making “derogatory remarks and using abusive language” in the presence of Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra while she was campaigning in Uttar Pradesh, The Indian Express reports.

10.14 am: Janata Dal (Secular) GT Devegowda says the Congress and JD(S) made mistakes, reports ANI. “There was a lot of confusion over seat distribution [and] no clarity in distribution of seats to JD(S),” he says. “People at top took lot of time to come up with a solution. They couldn’t convince grassroots workers. If our leaders could have solved this issue properly, it could have made a difference. Some JD(S) workers have even cast their votes for BJP.”

10.07 am: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says the United Progressive Alliance government conducted “multiple surgical strikes” but did not believe in using them to garner votes, reports Hindustan Times.

Read more here:

UPA government conducted surgical strikes but did not use them to get votes: Manmohan Singh to HT

9.30 am: On Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s claim that her party fielded weak candidates to eat into BJP’s vote share, Yadav says it was just an excuse, ANI reports. “I cannot believe in these types of statements,” he says. “I do not believe that the Congress has fielded weak candidates anywhere. No party does it. People are not with them. That is why they are making excuses.”

9.28 am: Yadav says BJP has failed on national security, reports ANI. “Our soldiers are dying on the border and in the Naxal affected areas,” he says. “BJP talks about soldiers. What type of national security is it when one soldier dies every day?”

9.22 am: Yadav says responds to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi’s claims that the BJP control the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. “No one controls us,” Yadav tells ANI. “We are political parties. It is the SP, BSP and RLD [Rashtriya Lok Dal] alliance in UP that is poised to give a setback to the ruling party. Our alliance will stop the bad policies of BJP.”

9.18 am: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav says the party will decided on the next prime minister when the final seat tally is announced, reports ANI. “Our alliance wants to give India a new PM,” he says. “It will be good if netaji [Mulayam Singh Yadav] gets the honour, but I feel he is probably not in the prime ministerial race.”

9.08 am: Aam Aadmi Party alleges the BJP tried to poach seven of its MLAs by offering them Rs 10 crore each. “In the last three days seven of our MLAs have said that BJP people have contacted them and offered Rs 10 crore to break them,” says Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Read more here:

Lok Sabha elections: AAP alleges BJP tried to poach seven of its MLAs for Rs 10 crore each

9.05 am: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav says there is no difference between the BJP and the Congress, ANI reports. “The Congress wants to benefit the BJP,” he says. “Who taught the central agencies to intimidate Opposition leaders? The BJP has learnt to misuse the Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of Investigation and other agencies against leaders in Opposition from the Congress.”

9 am: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said he was not aspiring to become the prime minister, reports ANI. “Opposition parties will sit together after the election and discuss who will be the prime minister,” he said. “Polling is to be held in three more phases, after that we will discuss.”

8.55 am: The Election Commission on Wednesday issued a show-cause notice to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday for his alleged remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a rally in Madhya Pradesh.

Read more here:

EC issues notice to Rahul Gandhi for claiming that Narendra Modi enacted law against Adivasis

8.50 am: Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed that the Congress hates him so much that it now dreams of killing him.

Read more here:

Congress hates me, they dream of killing me, claims Narendra Modi in Madhya Pradesh

8.45 am: Here are the top updates from Wednesday:

• The Election Commission on Wednesday barred Bharatiya Janata Party’s Bhopal candidate and terror-accused Pragya Singh Thakur from campaigning for 72 hours starting 6 am on Thursday.
• The Election Commission said Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not violate the Model Code of Conduct by appealing to first-time voters to dedicate their votes to security personnel killed in the Pulwama attack in February.
• The Election Commission rejected the nomination of Samajwadi Party’s candidate from Varanasi Tej Bahadur Yadav.
• The Congress moved the Election Commission against the alleged misuse of state machinery by the Prime Minister’s Office for Narendra Modi’s election campaign.
• The Shiv Sena distanced itself from an editorial in its mouthpiece Saamana that called for a ban on burqas in the country. The editorial was published in the Wednesday edition of the newspaper.