The Congress on Monday approached the Election Commission (EC) with multiple representations including one against Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for sloganeering in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a Bengaluru pooling booth after she cast her vote.
The party also asked the EC to register a criminal case against two Kannada media outlets — Vijayavani newspaper and Digvijaya TV channel — for allegedly spreading a ‘fake letter’ that is supposed to have been written by Karnataka Home Minister M B Patil and former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi where they discussed dividing communities on religious lines.
The Congress delegation, led by Kapil Sibal, included senior leaders Jairam Ramesh and Abhishek Manu Singhvi among others.
“I told the EC that the BJP doesn’t seem to care about the existence of the EC as they just don’t care about the Model Code of Conduct. They do what they feel like. The Prime Minister also doesn’t care, his Ministers also don’t care and now even the Defence Minister also is doing the same,” Mr. Sibal told reporters.
“What message does it convey to the people of India?” he asked.
Mr. Sibal also raised the issue of investigative agencies being used by the ruling party to target the Opposition candidates.
The Congress leader alleged that one of their candidates from Bihar was raided by the agencies though nothing objectionable was recovered from his house.
“Though the candidate was not in his house, his parents were troubled. Nothing came out but the word about raid spread quickly to defame the candidate,” he said.