The BJP Delhi unit has approached the Election Commission Tuesday and sought action against the Aam Aadmi Party alleging violation the Model Code of Conduct as they tried and incited violence by burning the copies of BJP’s 2014 manifesto with pictures of their leaders.
BJP has filed a complaint with EC, claiming that AAP is in violation of MCC. | #May23WithTimesNow pic.twitter.com/zg2AIlP47f
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) March 19, 2019
In its complaint, the BJP alleged that AAP was “indulging in violent acts” and violating the model code of conduct. They claimed that the AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal along with his other party members namely, Manish Sisodia, Rajendra Pal Gautam, Kailash Gahlot and Pankaj Gupta have burnt the BJP’s manifesto on March 13.
In the letter written to the EC by SN Verma, co-convener of the legal department of BJP Delhi Pradesh, he requested that orders should be issued to leaders and workers of AAP to “cease and desist from such violent acts”.
The letter read, ” The AAP leaders are violating MCC by either not seeking permission for such events from Election Commission or they have sought permission for election meetings from EC and misused such permission to violate MCC by burning BJP’s manifesto”.
Meanwhile, with the Lok Sabha elections fast approaching, the AAP’s theatrics has just speeded up. On January 22, 2019, the BJP Delhi unit filed a criminal defamation case against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other AAP members for allegations levelled by Kejriwal against the BJP of deliberately deleting names of lakhs of voters from the electoral roll in Delhi.
Terming the allegations as ‘unfortunate and false’, the BJP had stated that adding or removing voters from the electoral roll is the responsibility of the Election Commission and not of any political party.
The BJP had also knocked the doors of the Election Commission demanding de-recognition of AAP as a registered political party from the Election Commission.
As reported earlier, the AAP call center, allegedly, had been making phone calls to people in Delhi and telling them that BJP has deleted their names from the voter list, and Arvind Kejriwal was restoring their names. Several people have reported receiving such calls, and some of them posted recordings of the calls on social media also.
After people raised objections on the misleading calls they received, the Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi had requested the Delhi police to investigate the phone calls that many people in Delhi have been receiving telling that their name has been struck off from the voter list.
However, this is not the first time the AAP is accused of violation of electoral norms. He had been called out by the BJP during Goa assembly elections in 2017 as well, when he had, during a series of rallies in Goa on January 7-8, asked voters to “accept money from the Congress and BJP candidates but vote for the AAP”.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had then filed two complaints against the AAP supremo, seeking his prosecution under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for asking voters to accept money. The Congress too had condemned the Delhi chief minister’s statement.
The poll panel had, thereafter, directed that a complaint is lodged against Arvind Kejriwal under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act dealing with bribing voters and the relevant sections of the IPC.
