india

Updated: Sep 05, 2020 17:11 IST

The Election Commission on Thursday imposed a 72-hour campaigning ban on junior finance minister Anurag Thakur on a charge that he had raised provocative slogans at a Delhi election meet. A second BJP leader Parvesh Verma has been taken off the campaign trail in national capital Delhi for96 hours, according to news agency ANI.

Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma were the BJP’s star campaigners for the February 8 elections in Delhi. They were taken off this list yesterday on the Election Commission’s orders but their party had insisted that they were allowed to campaign.

That situation changed on Thursday afternoon after the poll panel decided to ban them from campaigning for their statements that rivals alleged, were divisive and communally charged.

Anurag Thakur was campaigning in Rithala when, in a widely shared video, he was seen purportedly prompting the crowd, saying “desh ke gaddaron ko... (traitors of the country...),” to which the crowd responded with “goli maaron … (shoot them...)”.

The commission had viewed the slogans to have the potential of disturbing communal harmony and aggravating the existing differences between social and religious communities.

Parvesh Verma, on the other hand, had been accused of multiple violations of the election code of conduct. He had announced at a public event that Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh area will be cleared of protesters agitating against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) within an hour if his party came to power in Delhi, allegedly promised to demolish mosques built on public land in his constituency. He represents West Delhi in the Lok Sabha.

In an interview to news agency ANI later, Verma said, “Lakhs of people gather there (Shaheen Bagh). People of Delhi will have to think and take a decision. They will enter your houses, rape your sisters and daughters, kill them.”