The Election Commission on Thursday gave a clean chit to Congress president Rahul Gandhi for calling BJP chief Amit Shah a “murder accused” during an election rally in Madhya Pradesh recently. The poll watchdog found no violation of Model Code in the Rahul Gandhi’s April 23 speech during an election rally in Sihora district of MP. Last month, Gandhi had attacked Shah. “Murder accused BJP president Amit Shah. Waah kya shaan hai (Wow what splendour),” he said, but did not elaborate. He had also said that Jay Shah is a “magician who converts Rs 50,000 into Rs 80 crore in three years”. He was referring to the BJP leader’s son Jay Shah.
EC officials said the “complaint was examined in detail and after examination of the complete transcript of speech sent by the district electoral officer of Jabalpur, the Commission is of the considered view that no violation of the model code of conduct is made out.” On Wednesday, a local metropolitan court in Ahmedabad had issued summons to Rahul and asked him to appear before it on July 9 in connection with a criminal defamation complaint filed by a BJP corporator for calling Shah a “murder accused”. Apart from this, a court in Surat on Thursday issued summons to the Congress chief in response to a criminal defamation suit filed by a Gujarat MLA over the Gandhi’s “how come all thieves have Modi as common surname” remark, reports PTI.
Chief Judicial Magistrate of Surat, B H Kapadia, issued summons to Gandhi, directing him to be present before the court on June 7. In his complaint, the MLA from Surat-West seat claimed the Congress president was defaming the entire Modi community by saying all “Modis are thieves”. He was referring to an election rally at Kolar in Karnataka on April 13, where Gandhi asked, “Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, Narendra Modi…how come they all have Modi as common surname. How come all the thieves have Modi as the common surname?” Yesterday, the poll body had given a second clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his appeal to first-time voters by invoking the Balakot airstrikes in Latur, Maharashtra, on April 9.
Day before yesterday, the EC had cleared the PM’s speech at Wardha under the Model Code of Conduct (MCC). In his April 1 speech at Wardha, Modi had referred to Rahul’s decision to also contest from Wayanad, saying that the party was “running away from majority-dominated areas” to “take refuge in areas where the majority is in minority”. In the heat of the election campaigns the political leaders are forgetting that what they are supposed to say and what not. This is directly showing them bad in the eyes of the people and also with that the public is losing their interest in the favour of these parties. What is happening is just talking and accusing each other.
