Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Election India 2009: Hate speech

Despite records of bloody communal riots, India has a discernible secular attitude. This is the reason why Varun Gandhi, a scion of the high-profile Indira Gandhi family, no less, is in trouble for his recent hate speech in his election meeting. Unlike other members of the Gandhi family, he's not a Congressman, and is fighting election from Pilibhit on a BJP ticket.

The Election Commission has gone overboard to file a criminal case against this greenhorn and is all set to award him punishment. The other political parties including the Congress and the leftists have already started clamouring for cancelling his candidature.

Varun, as expected, is citing crap in his defence (victim of political conspiracy, the voice in the CD is not his etc}. All of which show he's a very inexperienced guy, and not savvy enough. How could the BJP field him as a candidate? This is another downside of Indian democracy: as long as you have right connections, you need not be bothered about your qualification.

But the thing I would like to see how the Election Commission finally deals with the issue. Would it punish Varun Gandhi for violation of its model code of conduct?

1 comment:

Anu said...

Whether election commission cancels his candidature or not, Indian voters definitely will. its unfortunate to have our young politicians with good education try the same old tactics to win an election. When will our nation of billion people get a young politician like Obama - someone who can at least play moral cards (don't care if this person is actually moral enough or not) and energize our country and get us all motivated to vote. Aren't we all tired enough to read about muslim votes vs brahmin votes vs naidu votes et al. Its time we have a leader who represents all, doesn't give derogatory remarks about any political party or any person and talks about how he/she would take the country forward. Media hasn't helped the cause either with our journalists equally divided every time there is an election. (see http://www.vaadvivaad.com/articles.php?article=53 )

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