Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Congress on Sunday urged the Election Commission to direct the deferring of the release of a movie 2020 Delhi based on the riots in north-east Delhi, alleging that the BJP was trying to communalise the political atmosphere ahead of the Assembly elections.
With the film slated to release on February 2, three days before the polls, senior lawyer and Congress MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the movie has the potential to polarise people and malign a particular community. The party had submitted a complaint to the EC in this connection.
Singhvi asked whether the BJP is not confident of its candidates and election campaign that it had to fall back on promoting communally motivated films to divide the society and mislead the voters. "Will parties now start sponsoring propaganda films as a part of their election campaign?" he said.
BJP leaders have been actively propagating the movie as if they have been hired as official promoters of the film and the trailer was shared by its IT Cell head Amit Malviya on his social media handle, he said.
"The trailer displays a completely exaggerated and discriminatory account of the sequence of events. It is no surprise that the BJP has again attempted to target a singular religious minority for political mileage. Why and how is such a film scheduled for release two days prior to elections?" he said.
"The answer is very clear. In 2019, the BJP adopted a similar modus operandi as it planned the release of the Modi biopic. We went all the way to the Election Commission and then the Supreme Court. It was upon our intervention that the EC finally issued directions to defer release of the biopic," he
Singhvi claimed that electoral fairness and transparency will be directly threatened if films like 2020 Delhi are allowed to release merely days before the election. "This is a direct attempt to influence voters against a particular religious community and to disrupt public tranquility," he said.
He said the Congress is not against propagating any film but the issue they are talking about is a "deliberately chosen sensitive, communally provocative, inciteful" movie being released days before the election.
Delhi Assembly Election 2025 | The first of two state assembly polls this year sees a three-way contest between AAP, Congress, and BJP in the nation's capital. AAP decided to contest the polls alone, causing rumours of a rift in I.N.D.I.A. BJP, meanwhile, is hoping the liquor excise policy scam and pollution in Delhi will give the saffron party an edge over AAP. Kejriwal, on the other hand, has different plans with his demand for reservations for Delhi Jats. Congress will also be looking to make its presence felt and has not held back from attacking its own alliance partner. Check live updates and track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.
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