CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, in a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora, has asked if the Election Commission was treating Prime Minister Narendra Modi differently from other candidates.
He lashed out at the EC over the clean chit given to Mr. Modi for his Wardha speech.
“Across the country, there is a growing concern about the manner in which the Election Commission is dealing with complaints regarding gross violation of the Model Code of Conduct by Mr. Modi,” Mr. Yechury said in the letter. Citing news reports, he highlighted how the government infrastructure and machinery had been allegedly used by the Prime Minister’s Office for securing information from various Ministries and State and district administrations to provide inputs for preparing his election speeches.
“We would like to pose the same question that we have done in the past. In dealing with violations of Model Code of Conduct, the EC appears to be not only halting, but carrying on at a pace which is emboldening perpetrators and exemplifies the notion of ‘delayed justice’ amounting to its actual ‘denial’!” he wrote.
He quoted reports that showed that the violations attributed to Mr. Gandhi were of far less import than the current violations.
“Therefore the question is, is Narendra Modi, a BJP candidate from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and a star campaigner for the BJP, is needed to be treated differently from enforcement of MCC for the simple reason that he happens to be the incumbent Prime Minister,” Mr. Yechury asked.
