The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to intervene in the Election Commission giving clean chits to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah on Congress complaints against their alleged hate speeches during the campaign in the Lok Sabha elections.
"We are not inclined to pass any order," said a three-judge bench of the the apex court, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, when disposing off a petition filed by Congress MP Sushmita Dev seeking its intervention.
Dev had filed an additional affidavit before the Supreme Court stating that the ECI has failed to appreciate that the hate speeches delivered by Modi and BJP Shah were 'corrupt practices' under Section 123A of the Representation of People Act, 1951.
The respondent, ECI, failed to appreciate that the hate speeches delivered by Modi and Shah were 'corrupt practices' under the RP Act, which ex-facie promote feelings of enmity and hatred between different classes of the citizens of India on grounds of religion," Dev had stated in the additional affidavit.
"The Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in an act unbecoming of the high office he holds, made unprecedented obscene/derogatory remarks, in a speech on May 6, 2019, by referring to present Congress President Rahul Gandhi's late father and former Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi, in Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh," it further stated.
Last week, Prime Minister Modi, while addressing a rally in Uttar Pradesh, had said that 'your (Rahul Gandhi) father (Rajiv Gandhi) was termed 'Mr Clean' by his courtiers, but his life ended as 'Bhrashtachari No. 1.
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