The Election Commission on Wednesday banned Bharatiya Janata Party MP Parvesh Verma from campaigning for 24 hours in the run up to the Delhi elections for calling Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal a “terrorist”. Campaigning will end on Thursday, and Delhi will vote two days later.
The commission barred Verma “from holding any public meetings, public processions, public rallies, road shows, and interviews, etc...for a period of 24 hours” from 6 pm on Wednesday. Last week, the poll body had banned him for four days for making objectionable remarks about anti-Citizenship Act protestors in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh locality.
“The commission is of the considered view that Sh Parvesh Sahib Singh made virtiolic aspersions against Sh Arvind Kejriwal, Chief Minister of Delhi which violate the...Model Code of Conduct,” read the commission’s notice.
Last week, Verma had said “terrorists like Kejriwal are hidden everywhere”, sparking a row between the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party. Kejriwal responded by saying he would let the people of Delhi decide whether he was “their son, their brother or a terrorist”.
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