New Delhi: The recent clean chits by the Election Commission to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah over allegations of poll code violations by the opposition were not unanimous, a leading English channel has learnt.
A high-ranking source in the Election Commission told the channel that on five occasions, one of the three commissioners dissented with the majority view to let PM Modi and Amit Shah off the hook for their comments.
The three-member “full commission” of the Election Commission consists of the Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora and the two election commissioners Ashok Lavasa and Sushil Chandra.
The poll panel’s rules express preference for a unanimous view, but provide for a majority ruling in the absence of unanimity.
The five rulings where one of the commissioners dissented with his two colleagues include two separate instances where the Prime Minister sought votes in the name of the martyrs of the Pulwama terror attacks, in speeches in Maharastra and Karnataka and two separate instances where the Prime Minister questioned Rahul Gandhi’s selection of the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat as pandering to minorities, in speeches in Maharashtra.
The fifth instance was related to Shah’s comments, also on Wayanad, where in a speech in Nagpur, he said “Rahul Gandhi is contesting in such a place where it is impossible to say when a procession is taken out, whether it is a procession in India or Pakistan”. In this case, too, the sole commissioner objected to the majority view granting the BJP president a clean chit.
The Election Commission’s formal orders bear no reference to the dissenting view.
The two instances where the PM and Amit Shah have been given a unanimous clean chit are PM Modi’s comment in Rajasthan where he said that India’s nuclear weapons are not for Diwali and the BJP chief’s speech in Bengal where he said that a new India has started giving a befitting reply to Pakistan.
The Election Commission has been hit by charges of bias by the opposition for inordinately delaying action against the Prime Minister, as a backlog of complaints against PM Modi built up.
In the case of the of votes-for-martyrs comments, the Election Commission acted 21 days after the complaint.
It finally took the nudging of the Supreme Court for the Election Commission to act on the rest, with the Commission passing 19 orders in the past four days.
In all its decisions so far, there has not been a single reprimand against the PM or Amit Shah.
Responding to media reports of dissent within the Election Commission, Congress leader P Chidambaram sent out a series of Tweets, saying the poll panel is finally showing some signs of life.
The Election Commission spokesperson declined to comment.
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