Election Commission likely to ask X to take down Karnataka BJP’s video post

A screengrab of the clip posted by Karnataka BJP on a social media platform targeting Muslims and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

The Election Commission (EC) is likely to ask X (formerly Twitter) to take down an animation video posted by the BJP’s Karnataka unit on May 4, that seeks to underline the party’s allegation of Muslim appeasement by the Congress, The Indian Express has learnt. The Congress had filed a complaint with the state chief electoral officer on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Congress is learnt to have submitted its response to the EC’s notice sent to party chief Mallikarjun Kharge on April 25, for alleged violations of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) by star campaigner Rahul Gandhi. While a similar notice was sent to BJP chief J P Nadda for MCC violations by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the party is learnt to have sought a second deadline extension.

Departing from its practice of issuing notices directly to the leaders concerned, the EC had asked the party chiefs to respond instead. Both Nadda and Kharge were supposed to send their replies by April 29, but they sought an extension and the Commission agreed to give them more time till May 6.

Kharge was asked to respond to a complaint on Rahul’s “false allegations” that the PM wanted “one nation, one language, one religion”. The EC’s notice to Nadda contained complaints against the PM’s speech in Banswara, Rajasthan, last month in which he referred to Muslims and said the Congress, if voted to power, could distribute the nation’s wealth among “infiltrators” and “those who have more children”.

In the case of the video posted by the Karnataka BJP, it is learnt that the EC is likely to take action under the MCC to remove the post, but is yet to decide if any action will be taken against the party.

The animation video, with an accompanying post that says “beware… beware… beware..!” in Kannada, shows a character depicting Rahul placing a large egg labelled as ‘Muslims’ in a nest with three smaller eggs labelled as ‘SC’, ‘ST’ and ‘OBC’. The Rahul character is shown snickering with another figure depicting Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramiah. When the chicks hatch, the Rahul character is shown feeding ‘funds’ to the ‘Muslim’ hatchling, which is shown wearing a skull cap. The ‘Muslim’ hatchling gets bigger and bigger, and finally removes the others from the nest.

In his campaign speeches, Modi has accused the Congress of wanting to carve out a quota for its “Muslim vote bank” by “robbing” the reservations of SCs, STs and OBCs.

The Karnataka Congress had filed a complaint on Sunday, seeking action against Nadda, state BJP chief B Y Vijayendra and the party’s national media in-charge Amit Malviya. It said the post was “clearly with an intention to wantonly provoke rioting and promote enmity between different religions…”

Reacting to the Congress’s complaint, Malviya said in a post on X: “The Congress and its ecosystem has filed FIR(s) against BJP’s national and state leadership for this post. Did the Congress expect to slip in draconian promises in their manifesto and not get called out? The Congress should in fact thank the BJP for taking their manifesto to the people in a manner that even they couldn’t. So take a chill pill. India has seen through your sinister plans. Now face the electorate and perish.”

The Karnataka chief electoral officer is learnt to be in touch with the social media platform through a state nodal officer appointed under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and X has written back asking that the request be sent via the Election Commission of India.

As per the voluntary code of ethics, social media platforms are supposed to take “expeditious action on valid legal requests” by the ECI.

Last month, X said in a statement that it had removed certain posts by political parties and candidates on the request of the ECI, but it disagreed with the same. The posts were by the Aam Aadmi Party, YSRCP, TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and state BJP president Samrat Choudhary.