Sravasti Dasgupta 
New Delhi: The Election Commission of India has continued to remain silent almost 24 hours since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Karnataka on Saturday (May 4) uploaded a video on its X (formerly Twitter) handle that showed caricatures of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah in a bid to demonise Muslims.
Continuing its openly communal campaign during the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, the cartoon video is titled with the caption “Beware beware beware” in Kannada. It depicts a nest containing four eggs: one labeled “Muslims” and the others labeled “SC,” “ST,” and “OBC.” The video then shows Gandhi feeding the egg labeled “Muslim” from a carton labeled “Funds.” Subsequently, the egg labeled “Muslim” hatches into a larger chick wearing a skull cap, which then proceeds to throw out the other three eggs – SC, ST, OBC – while caricatures of Gandhi and Siddaramaiah laugh.
The Wire has written to the Election Commission (EC) regarding the video.
On Sunday, the Congress filed a complaint to the EC through its KPCC media and communication chairman Ramesh Babu against BJP president J.P. Nadda, its IT cell in-charge Amit Malviya, state president B.Y. Vijayendra and social media in-charge of the Karnataka BJP.
“The act of the accused person is clearly with an intention to wantonly provocate rioting and promote enmity between different religions and is prejudicial to maintenance of harmony apart from intimidating members of SC/ST community not to vote for particular candidate and causing enmity against members of SC/ST community. Hence, it is just and necessary to initiate suitable action,” Ramesh Babu said.
Calls to the EC to take action against open calls for the use of religion in poll campaigns, have not elicited any action.
This despite the EC while announcing the poll schedule in March, itself warning against the use of fake news on social media.
During the press conference, chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar said: “We are also conscious that on social media in a democracy there is a full freedom to criticise anybody including criticising us. If we are doing wrong, criticise us. But you should not be allowed to create fake news which is not based on facts. Because it can disturb the public order. This spreads rumours. We have issued instructions and started institutionalised norms,” Kumar said.
He further said that under the new norms instituted by the EC, under Section 79 (3)(B) of the IT Act, each state is empowered to remove unlawful content in all states and officials have been duly appointed.
“All our machinery will react to what is coming by facts. We will try to join the issue instead of being in the background if somebody is trying to do a fake kind of a narrative which is disturbing the level playing field, disturbing the public order and is not based on facts and which has crossed the line of criticism. We will also launch very soon on our website Myth versus Reality.”
Since then Myth versus Reality has been launched on the EC’s website, these videos by the BJP find no mention of it.
The Model Code of Conduct expressly bars appeals “to caste or communal feelings for securing votes”.
Elections in India are regulated under the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and the use of religion to seek votes constitutes “corrupt practices” under Section 123 (3) of the Act, which deals with references to appeals on the ground of religion.
The BJP Karnataka video comes days after an animated video shared by the BJP’s official Instagram handle on Tuesday (April 30), which directly named and targetted Muslim Indians was removed on May 1.
However, it is unclear whether the video was taken down by the party itself or by Instagram. A large number of Instagram users said that they had reported the video for “false information” and “hate speech”.
Both the videos, the one uploaded on Twitter by BJP Karnataka on Saturday and the one uploaded by the official BJP handle on Instagram last month, pushed Prime Minister Modi’s central assertions that the Congress, if elected, would distribute Hindu wealth and property to Muslims. The videos also push Modi’s recent misleading claims that the Congress manifesto states that if elected to power, the party will snatch the rights of SC/ST/OBCs and give them to Muslims.
The Wire has reported on the misleading claims being made by the BJP on the Congress manifesto to push a communal agenda.
On April 25, the EC had taken cognisance of allegations of Model Code of Conduct violations by Modi, and also Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge and issued notices to the party presidents in near identical worded letters but did not mention the alleged MCC violators by name but identifies them as “some of [the party’s] star campaigners”.