SC seeks details of clean chits given by Election Commission to PM Modi

Election Commission

The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Election Commission to place before it records of the clean chits given by it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on complaints of poll code violations.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi posted the matter for further hearing to May 8. The EC is expected to submit the records by then.

The bench was hearing to the petition filed by Congress MP Susmita Dev, alleging that the EC was biased.

“Prime Minister and the party in power have for the past five years fostered and cultivated an atmosphere of communal tension for their petty political gains,” Dev has alleged in her petition.

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Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Dev, told the court that despite one election commissioner, of the three who take the final decision, dissenting on several decisions, the poll panel ended up giving clean chits to both (PM Modi and Shah).

Singhvi also informed the court that the Congress has sought the dissent notes from the panel but “the dissent notes have not been supplied to us.”

He also said that while the commission had not taken any step on allegations of hate speeches by PM Modi and Shah, the poll panel had initiated action against other candidates for “identical words spoken and similar phraseology used during the campaigning.”

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