SC to take up poll panel clean chits to PM at next hearing, Congress alleges bias

india

Updated: May 06, 2019 12:18 IST

The Supreme Court is likely to peruse the Election Commission order clearing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speeches at its next hearing on Wednesday after the Congress accused the poll panel of bias.

Congress leader Sushmita Dev’s lawyer Abhishek Singhvi told the court on Monday that there were numerous instances where the Election Commission had found remarks by a political leader to be a poll code violation but found no violation when a similar allegation was leveled against PM Modi and Amit Shah.

Singhvi also asked the bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi that there should be some kind of guidelines in place to guide the election commission when it examines complaints of model code of conduct violations.

PM Modi has been given clean chits in all of six cases so far — for speeches in Barmer, Varanasi, Patan, Nanded, Latur and Wardha; while BJP president Amit Shah has been cleared for speeches in Nagpur and Krishna Nagar.

In five cases relating to PM Modi, one of the three election commissioners did not agree with the final decision but the dissenting view has not been incorporated in the final order that was passed.

A former chief election commissioner had earlier told HT that the commission has to put on record the complaint, the response from the person against whom the complaint is made, and the final order, whether it is unanimous or with a dissenting view. “It is always a detailed order,” the former poll panel chief said.

HT Editorial | The Election Commission cannot be so selective

The decisions by the Election Commission come after Sushmita Dev, who is a member of Parliament from Assam’s Silchar in the outgoing Lok Sabha, accused the Election Commission of sitting on complaints against the PM Modi and Amit Shah. In her petition before the top court, Dev accused Modi and Shah of hate speeches and using armed forces for “political propaganda”.

Last week, the court gave the commission time till Sunday to clear the backlog of complaints against the top politicians.