The Election Commission(EC) has done well to haul Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi for his incendiary remarks. At election campaign rallies earlier this week, Modi demanded that Afzal Guru, a convict in the 2001 Parliament attack case be handed over so that “we can hang him” and crowed about the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh on Gujarat soil.

The Gujarat chief minister’s remarks incited the crowd to chant their endorsement of the extra-judicial killing of Sohrabuddin. Modi’s justification of Sohrabuddin’s murder is offensive. It is shocking that the chief minister of a state is publicly boasting about the murder of a citizen.

What is more, his remarks amount to defiance of the judiciary, as the Sohrabuddin case is being heard in the Supreme Court. Modi has been issued a notice by the EC for violation of the model code of conduct. With possible disqualification staring him in the face, he is seeking to wriggle out of trouble by claiming that it was Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s description of BJP leaders as “merchants of death” that provoked him.

Modi had said that he is seeking a mandate for his achievements on the economic front. But with voting day around the corner and the political temperature going up, he has gone back to his old tricks of polarising Gujarat’s electorate and inciting the people with his hate-filled rhetoric in order to win votes. And so the obnoxious comments about Sohrabuddin and the incendiary remarks at election rallies. Whatever his excuse for the provocative remarks, this is untenable conduct. He deserves stern punishment.

Almost as disgraceful as the hate-filled campaign rhetoric of Modi and others in the Sangh Parivar is the pusillanimous election strategy of the Congress. Wary of losing Hindu votes it has refused to attack Modi’s fundamentalist ideology and has shied away from talking about communal polarisation in the state.

It has not offered the electorate an alternative vision for the state. Instead it has allowed Modi to define the agenda and is content to go along with that. It has emerged as Hindutva’s B-team in Gujarat, having failed to condemn unambiguously the politics of religious exclusivism. Many in Gujarat are looking for change at the helm not just in terms of the party or personalities but in terms of ideology and agenda. But the Congress is not speaking up against the fundamentalism being peddled by Modi. It is not offering Gujarat’s electorate a real alternative.