EC notices to BJP, Cong chiefs over complaints against PM Modi, Rahul

Asked to respond by 11 am on Friday

Amid the ongoing Lok Sabha polls, the Election Commission issued notices to the leaderships of the BJP and Congress over complaints received in connection to political speeches made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. However, the ECI notices have raised eyebrows in political circles with many questioning why the poll body did not address the leaders directly, choosing to flag the matter to the party chiefs.

In both cases, the Election Commission press releases do not name the leaders Prime Minister Modi or Rahul Gandhi. The rival complaints against them are attached to the poll body's notice. In its notice, the Election Commission underlines the role of star campaigners in the election campaign.

It says star campaigners are "expected to contribute to a higher quality of discourse, inter alia, by way of providing an allIndia perspective, which sometimes gets distorted in the heat of the contests at the local level"." Thus, the expectation from Star Campaigners is to provide corrective action or a sort of healing touch, when the intensity of the local campaign disrupts or inadvertently crosses over such boundaries.

The Star Campaigners are thus expected to utilise this privilege for "propagating the programme of the political parties" and, therefore, their speeches in the campaign space necessarily needs to be judged at a higher threshold of compliance," it says.