The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to pass any order on the petition filed by the Congress on clean chit given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah by the Election Commission (EC) in a string of complaints of alleged poll violations.
A bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said they could not go into orders passed by the poll panel unless these were challenged on specific grounds, a report in Hindustan Times said.
Earlier, Congress MP, Sushmita Dev had filed a petition seeking urgent and necessary directions to the poll body to take a decision on the complaints filed against PM Modi and Amit Shah over alleged violations of electoral laws during campaigning.
PM Modi and Amit Shah have been accused of making “hate speeches” and “using” the armed forces for “political propaganda” during their Lok Sabha poll campaigns.
Of the 11 complaints filed against PM Modi for poll violations, EC has given a clean chit to the PM in six cases. However, none of the orders has been published on the poll panel’s website, which is normally done in other cases.
“There were 11 cases, six have been disposed off. The Supreme Court had given us time till Monday to reply. The reply has been filed and the next scheduled hearing is on Wednesday. We will not comment on it as the matter is sub judice,” said the Deputy Election Commissioner Saxena.
According to reports, one of the two election commissioners had given a dissenting view in the decision of the ‘full Election Commission’ to give clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a few cases.
The decisions were then taken based on 2:1 majority as per prescribed law which governs the functioning the of the poll panel, the sources said.