BJP wants Election Commission to derecognise Congress

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday took its fight against the Congress to the Election Commission, seeking its derecognition and accusing the party and its vice-president Rahul Gandhi of repeatedly violating the Model Code of Conduct.

A BJP delegation, led by party vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, met Chief Election Commissioner V S Sampath and lodged a complaint against Gandhi for allegedly equating the BJP government in Chhattisgarh with “thieves and looters” at a rally on November 16.

The leaders also complained against him for alleging in a rally in Delhi on November 17 that the BJP had created social tension in Karnataka and Maharashtra.

The delegation told Sampath that the Congress did not dissociate itself from Gandhi's statements. The Congress has actively endorsed his speeches and thus violated the Model Code of Conduct, it added.

“He (Gandhi) made false, defamatory, derogatory and baseless allegations against the BJP, which can create hatred against the BJP in the minds of people,” it said.

The BJP also accused the Congress leader of spreading a “false and baseless” notion that the BJP was responsible for the killing of former Chhattisgarh Congress president Nand Kumar Patel, who died in a Maoist attack along with several other party leaders on May 25.

The delegation also submitted copies of advertisements put out by the Congress in Madhya Pradesh, which branded its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi as “feku (braggart)”, and asked people to “enjoy his lies” but vote for the Congress.