New Delhi, May 22 (PTI) After the EC asked both BJP and Congress on Wednesday to correct campaign discourse, the Congress accused the poll panel of "showing undue deference to the party in power" and claimed that statements of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are in no way comparable to those made by its leaders.

"Level-playing playing field cannot mean drawing a wholly bogus equivalence," Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said.

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The party was reacting after the Election Commission directed the BJP leaders to refrain from making speeches on religious and communal lines and asked the opposition Congress not to make potentially divisive statements on the socio-economic composition of the armed forces.

In a post on X, Ramesh alleged that the statements made by PM Modi and Shah using "religion in political campaigning" are a blatant violation of the model code and against Supreme Court judgements.

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He said, in turn, the Congress leaders are only campaigning to protect the constitutional rights of Dalits, tribals and backwards.

"The ECI's directions to both the INC and BJP complaints are a perfect example of how a Constitutional body is abdicating its responsibilities and showing undue deference to the party in power for the moment," he alleged in a post on X.

"The sheer brazenness of the statements of the outgoing PM and his senior colleagues like the outgoing HM can in no way be compared to the statements made by leaders of the Congress against which complaints have been lodged. Level-playing playing field cannot mean drawing a wholly bogus equivalence," Ramesh also said.

"The statements of the outgoing PM especially are blatant violations of the EC's Model Code of Conduct and also of various Supreme Court judgments on the misuse of religion in political campaigning," Ramesh said in his post.

He also claimed that the Congress is campaigning to protect the constitutional right of Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs to reservations and asked, "How on Earth can this be called casteist?"

The Election Commission on Wednesday came down heavily on the ruling BJP and opposition Congress.

Noting that the country's socio-cultural milieu cannot be made a casualty to elections, it told BJP president J P Nadda and Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge that utterances of star campaigners follow patterns and create narratives that can be damaging beyond the model code period.

Referring to their respective replies to the notices issued to them on April 25, the election authority said that "technical loopholes or extreme interpretations of other political party's utterances" cannot discharge the parties and their campaigners from the core responsibility of their own content which ought to be corrective to the ongoing discourse "and not further plummeting the quality of campaign discourse".

It reminded the two parties of provisions of the model code which state that no party or candidate will be involved in any activity that may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic.

Nadda was issued the notice on opposition charge that Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a divisive speech in Rajasthan's Banswara.

In his reply to the notice, Nadda had maintained that the statements of BJP's star campaigners rely on facts to expose the "mal intent" of the Congress to the nation.

He had also told the EC that the Congress and the INDIA bloc, in pursuance of vote-bank politics, have begun "opposing India as a nation, its identity, its original Hindu religion".

The poll watchdog rejected Nadda's defence describing it as "not tenable" and asked him and his party's star campaigners to desist from campaigning on religious and communal lines. It also asked the BJP to stop campaign speeches that may divide society.

"The Commission expects BJP, as the ruling party at the Centre to fully align the campaign methods to the practical aspects of the composite and sensitive fabric of India," the EC said.

Along with Nadda, the EC had issued a similar notice to Kharge, asking him to respond to the complaints filed by the BJP against him and the party's senior leader Rahul Gandhi regarding their remarks.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)