Delhi Chief Electoral Officer P Krishnamurthy on Tuesday clarified that the AAP had in fact modified its song including the removal of the video, which was one of the main objections put forward by the poll body. He was responding to a query on the AAP leader who claimed to secure a moral victory by getting its campaign song ‘Jail ke jawab mein hum vote denge’ without any modification.
“On May 2, we received a letter of approval for our campaign song without any changes. We have started using the song. In our point-by-point rebuttal, we had objected to all issues raised by the ECI and did not accept any of their recommendations or change any word in our campaign song. We did not surrender to the tanashahi of the EC. We did not bow down to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) intentions. The result was the truth won, democracy was saved and the BJP lost,” claimed song-writer and AAP Timarpur MLA Dilip Pande.
While answering questions put forward by the media on the claims of AAP getting its campaign songs without modified and the BJP calling it a ‘lie’, the Delhi CEO said that as far as he knows the song has been modified. “While there is a separate body that oversees such matters, from what I know they had removed the video of the song, which was one of the main problems with its campaign song ‘Jail ke jawab mein hum vote denge’ and made other modifications in their songs as per they were asked.”
The Election Commision on May 27 raised eight objections to various lines and phrases in AAP’s campaign song while stating that it violated various provisions of the Advertising Codes and ECI guidelines. The phrase ‘jail ke jawab mein hum vote denge’ made to the top of the list while the election body objected to its video.
It alleged that an aggressive mob holding the photo of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, showing him behind bars, cast doubts on the judicial system.
Further it objected to the phrases ‘tanashahi party ko hum chot denge’ and ‘goondagardi ke khilaf hum vote denge’. The Delhi chief electoral officer had said that these phrases, along with a clip showing Manish Sisodia being escorted by the police, “tends to present the picture of police in bad taste”.
The Delhi Chief Electoral Office said that lines ‘Awazein khilaf thi jo sabko jail mein daal dia, bas unko hi bahar rakha jisne unko maal dia/ itna lalach, itna nafrat, bhrastachari se mohabbat’ are slanderous and criticised the ruling party on the basis of unverified facts.
“Tanashahi party ko hum chot denge with clip showing aggressive mob clasing with police shows criticism of the ruling party on the basis of unverified facts,” the state election commission said, while citing Rule-6, Programme Code (1) and Rule 7 (2) (iii) .
It also quoted para 2.4 (d) of Part B of the ECI guidelines, which says “incitement of violence” shall not be permitted while certifying political advertisements. It cited ECI guidelines’ Para 2.5 (d) which “bars criticism of other parties or their workers on behalf of unverified allegations or on distortions”.
Following this, the Election Commission asked the AAP to “modify the contents of the creative as per the Advertising Codes prescribed under the Cable Television Network Rules, 1994 and the ECI guidelines/ norms”.
