On the eve of the second phase of polling for Gujarat Assembly elections, the Election Commission (EC) on Wednesday ordered lodging of FIRs (first information reports) against television news channels for telecasting an interview of Congress President-elect Rahul Gandhi. It also served a show cause notice to Rahul Gandhi for violating the election guidelines (model code of conduct).
The remaining 93 of the 182 Assembly seats would go to polls on Thursday. The first phase of polling, on 89-seats, had taken place on December 9. The counting of votes will take place on December 18.
The Congress has protested the EC order on news channels. It alleged that Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi violated the model code of conduct by “misusing” the FICCI platform on Wednesday by making it an election speech and demanded FIRs be registered against the PM and other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders for violating the guidelines.
The Gujarat state unit of the Congress party has filed a complaint with the state EC against Pankaj Patel, chairman of pharmaceutical giant Cadila Healthcare, who is also the outgoing president of the FICCI.
In its complaint, the Congress said Patel, during his address at the FICCI event in New Delhi, appealed the electorate to vote for the BJP and his speech was telecast on news channels. The EC confirmed it had received the Congress complaint while Patel could not be reached for comment.
The EC directed the Gujarat chief electoral officer to lodge FIRs against TV channels came at the end of a frenetic day of political developments marked by the top leaderships of the BJP and Congress targeting each other with allegations of corruption and questions their respective records on issues of national security.
The day began on a solemn note with Modi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, and others attended a ceremony at the Parliament to offer tributes to the martyrs in the terrorist attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001.
Just before the ceremony, Singh greeted Modi with a ‘namaste’ to which the PM briefly cupped his hands. Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, party’s President-elect Rahul Gandhi, BJP veteran L K Advani and others were also present. Rahul Gandhi and Modi, however, did not greet each other.
A few hours later, Singh released a video where he accused Modi of spreading “falsehoods and canards” to “score political points in a lost cause”.
Earlier this week, Modi had accused Singh of colluding with Pakistan to ensure BJP’s defeat in Gujarat. In a series of tweets, BJP chief Amit Shah hits back at Singh and Rahul Gandhi. He said the two leaders were “maliciously attacking the PM” out of desperation.