A day after the Election Commission’s notice to Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, the party justified the Gandhi scion’s attack on BJP in Bihar elections and instead sought that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be given a notice for vitiating the atmosphere through his speeches. The party said that the poll body should not have allowed “blatant misuse of machinery” by the Prime Minister.
Party spokesman Anand Sharma said there was “nothing wrong” in Rahul’s statement as it was a part of the political discourse. The Prime Minister should’ve been given a notice instead as his speeches in Bihar have been “seeds for dividing people by selectively targeting minority community”, said Sharma.
The EC had issued a show-cause notice to Rahul Gandhi for his remarks that BJP makes Hindus and Muslims fight each other and said prima facie the Congress vice president has violated the provisions of the Model
Code of Conduct in force for Bihar polls.
Noting that the EC has a constitutional mandate for holding free and fair polls, Sharma said the Commission should have “not allowed blatant misuse of machinery by the Prime Minister”. He said the Prime Minister twice made policy statements through his “Mann Ki Baat” programme on public broadcaster All India Radio.
Also, the AIR and Doordarshan telecast live
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s Dussehra address “which only talked about the so called achievements of the Modi Government,” he alleged. “Why the Election Commission failed to prevent this blatant misuseIJ” Sharma asked.