EC sends notices over Modi, Rahul speeches

NEW DELHI: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday issued separate notices to the presidents of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress seeking responses by 11am on Monday to complaints of violations of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Member of Parliament (MP) Rahul Gandhi and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge himself, underlining that campaign speeches of star campaigners need to be judged “at a higher threshold of compliance”.

The notices came days after 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”.