The election commission of india has taken cognisance of the violation of the Model Code of Conduct by prime minister Narendra Modi and congress leader rahul Gandhi and sought their responses on the same by april 29, 11 am. Both the bharatiya janata party and congress had raised allegations of causing hatred and divide based on religion, caste, community, or language.  Invoking the section 77 of the Representation of the people Act, the poll panel held party presidents responsible, as a first step, to reign in star campaigners.

The allegations against Modi and rahul have been exchanged with bjp President jp nadda and INC President Mallikarjuna Kharge as a first step. Political parties will have to take primary and increasing responsibility for the conduct of their candidates, star campaigners in particular. Campaign speeches by those holding high positions are of more serious consequences, the ECI said.

"The grant of the status of the 'Star Campaigner' statutorily lies entirely within the realm of the Political Parties under Section 77 of the Representation of the people Act, 1951, and the Star Campaigners are expected to contribute to a higher quality of discourse, inter alia, by way of providing an all-India perspective, which sometimes gets distorted in the heat of the contests at the local level," said the poll panel in its notice. "Thus, the expectation from Star Campaigners is to provide corrective action or a sort of healing touch, when the intensity of local campaign disrupts or inadvertently crosses over such boundaries. The Star Campaigners are thus expected to utilize this privilege for "propagating the programme of the political parties" and, therefore, their speeches in the campaign space necessarily need to be judged at a higher threshold of compliance," it added.