The Congress on April 8 raised a complaint with the Election Commission of India (EC) against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comment that the Congress manifesto carried the imprint of the Muslim League, with “every page reeking of breaking India”.
In a separate post on X, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge claimed that the BJP’s electoral graph was plummeting and that was why “the Rashtriya Swayansevak Sangh (RSS) is remembering its best friend: the Muslim League”.
Accusing the BJP’s political and ideological ancestors of supporting the British and Muslim League against Indians during the freedom struggle, he went on to say, “Everyone knows how Shyama Prasad Mukherjee formed his governments in Bengal, Sindh and Nort West Frontier Province in the 1940s in coalition with the Muslim League?”
A delegation of senior Congress leaders, including Mukul Wasnik, Salman Khurshid, Pawan Khera and Gurdeep Sappal, raised the issue with EC officials; they also discussed other issues such as the use of pictures and large cut-outs of the Prime Minister in government buildings and colleges. They demanded that these cut-outs be removed for a level playing field in the upcoming parliamentary election.
In a post on X, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said the party had filed two complaints against Mr. Modi. “We live in hope that the Hon’ble Commission will uphold its Constitutional mandate. For our part, we will continue to pursue all avenues, political and legal, to expose this regime,” he said.
Slamming the Congress’s manifesto in his rallies, Mr. Modi had said, “Every page reeks of breaking India into pieces. The Congress manifesto reflects the same thinking that was prevalent in the Muslim League during the freedom movement. It completely bears the imprint of the Muslim League and whatever is remaining is completely dominated by the Leftists”.
The Congress also filed a complaint with the poll panel against the use of armed forces in poll campaigns by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in violation of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) and the EC’s notifications. It also raised its earlier complaint made to the EC on April 6 against Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar for allegedly giving false information about his financial status in his election affidavit; against public broadcaster Doordarshan airing the film The Kerala Story as it “vilifies a religious community and lends credence to the idea of Love Jihad being writ large in the country”.
