He urged the Commission to act on the complaints swiftly and act against the leaders, including PM Modi for their conduct and anti-Muslim hate speeches.
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist), on Sunday wrote to the Election Commission of India asserting that more and more the leaders from the Modi led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are resorting to incite hatred against the Muslims community after the poll body failed to act against them.
In a statement, Yechury pointed out that the CPI(M) through a series of complaints earlier, brought to the notice of the Election Commission of India the serious violation of the Model Code of Conduct by a number of BJP leaders.
In these complaints, the party highlighted the blatant lies and fabrication, fear mongering and overtly communal appeals by the BJP leaders. But the EC remained silent and did not act against the culprits.
“We had urged the Commission to act against offenders immediately to nip the disease in its bud. Unfortunately, the ECI sought not to act,” writes Yechury.
He noted that in the complaint against the Prime Minister, the Commission, in a departure from precedents, instead of sending notice to him, sent it to the President of the BJP after a lapse of many days and after the issue was raised in various forums.
“But the notice to the BJP has had no impact as is revealed by repeated violations by the Prime Minister as well as other leaders of the party. More and more leaders of the party are now taking resort to inciting hatred against the Muslim community using anti-Muslim tropes,” said the CPI(M) chief.
He also pointed out the controversial speech made by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki where Modi said “if SP and Congress come to power, Ram Lalla will be in a tent again and they will run a bulldozer on Ram temple”.
Yechury also cited the speech made by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath targeting Muslims in Bihar’s Saran during an election rally on 17 May. Yogi accused the Congress and RJD of robbing reservation from the SC/ST and diverting it to Muslims.
The leftist party also pointed to the speech made by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma targeting the Muslim community in Bihar’s Siwan on 18 May. In a disparaging tone, Sarma said that he shut down the ‘Mulla’ making shops – referring to madrassas and his action against madrasa in Assam.
Sarma in his speech had said “We closed 700 madrassas in Assam and no one dared to raise their voice against it and this is new India, the Hindus’ India and I won’t let these Mulla making shops open again. We need 400 seats so that we can bring the Uniform Civil Code, construct Krishna Janambhoomi temple, construct Gyanvapi temple and stop reservation to Muslims.”
While reiterating the demand for the action on earlier complaints lodged by the party with ECI, CPI(M) urged the Commission to act swiftly against Narendra Modi, Yogi Adityanath and Himanta Biswa for their conduct and hatespeeces.
