Varun Gandhi doesn't deserve to be candidate: Election Commission

[shab]

Sun, Mar 22 11:44 PM

New Delhi, March 22 (IANS) In a stinging indictment of Varun Gandhi Sunday night, the Election Commission held him guilty of breaching the model code of conduct and said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nominee for Lok Sabha polls from Uttar Pradesh did not deserve to be a candidate. It asked the party not to field him in the upcoming polls.

A late evening official communique said: 'In the considered opinion of the (Election) Commission, the respondent (Varun) does not deserve to be a candidate in the present general elections.'

The Election Commission said: 'The two speeches (by Varun Gandhi) contained highly derogatory references and seriously provocative language of a wholly unacceptable nature against a certain community.'

Not sparing the BJP, the order stated: 'Any sponsorship of his candidature by the BJP, or any other political party, at this election would be perceived as endorsing his unpardonable acts of inciting violence and creating feelings of enmity and hatred between different classes of citizens of India, destroying the social, democratic and plural fabric of the country.'

Varun Gandhi, who is Indira Gandhi's grandson, the late Sanjay Gandhi's son, and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's nephew, has been at the centre of a raging storm since Tuesday with a criminal case filed against him for his alleged hate-Muslim inflammatory remarks in Pilibhit of Uttar Pradesh.

Set to contesting his maiden election, the 29-year-old Gandhi was shown in CDs making fanatical, anti-Muslim, pro-Hindu speeches.

'The commission considered the speeches as a grave violation of the model code of conduct, apart from amounting to promoting feelings of enmity and hatred between different classes on the ground of religion, outraging the religious feeling of a particular community, and promoting hatred and ill-will between two classes of citizens and provoking a section of the citizens to indulge in violence,' the order said.