New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Congress party to place on record the Election Commission’s orders giving clean chit to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah on charges of poll code violations by their election speeches.
Senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for petitioner Congress MP and party women wing president Susmita Dev, submitted before a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta that in cases where similar phraseology was employed by other politicians in the course of campaigning, action was taken but the PM and Mr Shah have been exonerated.
Mr Singhvi also contended that most of these decisions rendered by the EC in favour of Mr Modi and Mr Shah have not been unanimous, and that one of the election commissioners has dissented in “five out of the six orders.”
The petitioner has not been supplied with the copies of these orders, Mr Singhvi said. He said that there is no set time schedule in the Model Code of Conduct for the commission to resolve these complaints.
Mr Singhvi said the representations made by the petitioner came to be addressed only a month later, by which time over four phases of the elections have been completed, making the complaints infructuous.
The Bench posted the matter for further hearing on May 8.
