NEW DELHI: Senior BJP leader L K Advani on Sunday charged the Congress with ‘deliberately communalising’ the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, a day after Union Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma was served an Election Commission notice for violating the model code of conduct (after he referred to the minority sub-quota issue in his speech in Farrukhabad).
He also said Salman Khurshid’s utterances on minority sub-quota had been supported by the Gandhis (‘even though the Congress distanced itself from Khurshid’s remarks’). “Never before have the Congress or its leaders communalised an Assembly election as consciously and deliberately as it has done in Uttar Pradesh this year. (The) Salman Khurshid episode is not the only instance to prove this point,” said Advani in his blog. “Digvijay Singh’s recent statement to the effect that the Batla House encounter with terrorists was a fake encounter has been yet another instance,” he added. Advani also expressed concern over the incident where Khurshid openly defied the EC forcing the commission to write to the President, requesting her to intervene in the matter. He added that while Kurshid continues in office, now Verma has spoken on similar lines and has been served a notice by the EC.
“If Verma also does something like what Khurshid has done, and escapes removal from the ministry, then Jaitley’s suspicion will be proved true that these statements are not individual acts of defiance of a constitutional authority, but party of a planned poll-oriented conspiracy by the party’s poll managers,” said Advani.