SC Rejects Sushmita Dev’s Plea Against EC Clean Chit to Modi-Shah

Senior advocate Singhvi said that there is no deadline set in the Model Code of Conduct to deal with complaints.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) and BJP President Amit Shah (right).

(File photo: PTI)

The Supreme Court on Wednesday, 8 May, refused to hear Congress MP Sushmita Dev's plea seeking action against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah for alleged poll code violations.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta, however, gave Dev the liberty to file a fresh plea against various Election Commission (EC) orders rejecting complaints of Model Code of Conduct (MCC) violations by Modi and Shah during campaigning.

The apex court on Monday, 7 May had asked the MP from Silchar to bring on record the EC’s orders giving clean chit to the BJP leaders on several complaints of MCC violations over alleged hate speeches and references to armed forces for “political propaganda”.

"Rightly or wrongly," the poll panel has decided the complaints of MCC violations and these orders warrant filing of a fresh petition, the bench said.

Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the EC, said the persons who had given representations of MCC violations to the poll panel have not come forward to assail them.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Dev, alleged dissent in five out of the six clean chits to Modi and said that the poll body has not disclosed the reasons given in the dissent.

Singhvi pointed out that there is no deadline or time frame set in the Model Code of Conduct to deal with complaints.

He alleged that the complaints against Modi and Shah took 35-40 days to be dealt with, by which the time 400 seats had had their polling.

Singhvi said that the court needs to take this up in a broader sense and lay down guidelines for deciding such complaints in the future.

The Supreme Court had on 2 May, put the poll body on the clock, giving it time till 6 May to take a final call on complaints filed by the Congress party against Modi and Shah.

Sixth Clean Chit to Modi

The EC on Saturday, 4 May, gave a clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his speech in Gujarat’s Patan, in which he claimed that his government had kept Pakistan on its toes to ensure the safe release of IAF pilot Abhinandan Varthaman.

The commission concluded that Modi had not violated the model code or its advisory on armed forces in his speech in Patan district on 21 April.

This is the sixth of the Prime Minister’s speeches that the EC has given a clean chit to.