No law against raising Sonia's origin issue

MANDATE 2004

The Election Commission here today said that it had received complaints about political parties indulging in "low level of debate" on Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin, but there was no breach of any code under the Indian Penal Code.

It also expressed its inability to take action against parties making personal attacks on Gandhi. "We can initiate action only when there is a physical attack. In case of non-physical attacks, we can only advise the parties to raise the level of debate," said Election Commissioner N Gopala-swami. He, however, said the poll panel stood by the doctrine of free speech, but not free for all speech.

Gopalaswami assured the parties that complaints would be looked into and action would be taken. Gopalaswami met leaders of recognised political parties in Tamil Nadu during which the AIADMK demanded a ban on the DMK for allegedly collecting crores of rupees as election fund.

Representatives of the AIADMK, the DMK, the Congress, the BJP, the MDMK and the PMK met the election commissioner separately at the Raj Bhawan and presented their grievances including large-scale "deletion" of voters' names from the rolls.

The meetings were organised to discuss arrangements for the May 10 Lok Sabha elections in the state. The AIADMK was represented by Finance Minister C Ponnaiyan and Law and Power Minister D Jayakumar, while the DMK by its organising secretary TKS Elangovan.

Ponnaiyan said the party demanded the poll panel to ban the DMK for the alleged violation of election code by "collecting" crores of rupees as election fund and "seeking deposit" of lakhs of rupees by each candidate.

BJP leader G Kumaravelu said Gopalaswami had assured to take appropriate action on their complaint against the DMK.

Gopalaswami said only 73 per cent of voters in Tamil Nadu had received the voter identity card.