The Election Commission of India came under a strongly worded attack from the Congress for its ‘proactive zeal that is solely reserved for the opposition.’
The Congress, through its national spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member , Abhishek Manu Singhvi, has sent a 15 pages preliminary response to the EC through Chief Election Commissioner while responding to the show cause notice that the EC gave to the Congress with regards to a political advertisement on Saturday. The EC had given the Congress 24 hour deadline to respond to this notice with evidence, a deadline that Singhvi termed as ‘unreasonable’. The Congress has demanded time to present its response in person to this notice.
The Election Commission, on Saturday had issued a notice to the Congress over its “corruption rate card” advertisements in poll-bound Karnataka. The commission sought “empirical” evidence from the party to prove its allegations. It asked the party to submit the said evidence before 7 pm on 7th May (Sunday). The notice was issued following a complaint lodged by the BJP.
Singhvi, while claiming that the EC has refused to look into ‘violation of every single electoral guidelines’ by the BJP leadership, said “The notice prescribes an unreasonable deadline of less than 24 hours to respond with evidence. This might be the first time that the Election Commission has attempted to summon a national party to provide evidence in support of a political advertisement. The Commission with its vast powers could have chosen to investigate the allegations, evidence of which is available in the public domain.”
Singhvi also mentioned in his letter that the senior leaders of the party, like that of DK Shivakumar and Siddaramiah are busy campaigning as the last leg of the campaign is on and there are barely 24 hours left for the election campaign to close in Karnataka and hence it would be improper and inappropriate to ask them to withdraw from the election campaign.
