EC assures Cong of steps to stop CD distribution

New Delhi, Apr 12 (UNI) The Election Commission has assured the Congress that it woud issue an administrative direction shortly to ensure that the BJP did not distribute or propagate the controversial CD targeting a particular community among the voters in Uttar Pradesh pending its final decision on the issue on April 19.

Stating this at a news conference here today, Mr Kapil Sibal, senior Congress leader and Convenor of the AICC Media Management Committee for Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, said the assurance came after the Congress argued before the Commission that the BJP seemed to have got a free hand to distribute the CD among the electorate.

Mr Sibal said both the Congress and the BJP argued their cases before the Commission at length. Upon the BJP raising the Naveen Chawla issue again today, the Congress contended that the BJP's insistence on Election Commisioner Naveen Chawla's exclusion from the hearing of the CD case was politically motivated and the BJP thereby wanted to delay the hearings.

There was not a single instance in the world when a member of a tribunal was told that he had no right to sit in judgement and the tribunal itself was called upon to pass its judgement on whether to allow the concerned member to sit there.

According to Mr Sibal, if the BJP really wanted to stop the proceedings on this count then it should move the High Court. In such case, the member of the tribunal would be made a party and he would then reply to the High Court.

This is a gross violation of the natural justice to demand an Election Commissioner to be out of the hearing, he said.

Mr Sibal pointed out that it had been the track record of the BJP all through that it had always attacked and levelled allegations against the Constitutional institutions, whether it be the President, the Speaker, Governor, the Supreme Court or the Election Commission."You can see the record in the history yourself." Replying to the BJP's contention that the Congress had always indulged in appeasement of the minority community, the Union Minister for Science and Technology said if it were so the condition of the minority community would not have remained static and they would not have been at the lowest rung of the ladder during the last 60 years.

"Whoever will attack the minorities we will come forward to protect them,"he asserted, adding, "we are not fascists or communal." UNI