Violation of MCC, misuse of Doordarshan, Sansad TV: Row over Modi speech deepens

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the nation through national television, through which he lashed out at the Congress and other opposition parties for failing the women’s reservation Bill in Parliament, has, however, been termed by the CPI (M), the CPI and the Congress as a violation of the Model Code of Conduct in the wake of impending Assembly elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, as well as a misuse of national television.

In a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, CPI(M) general secretary M. A. Baby and CPI Rajya Sabha MP P. Sandosh Kumar asserted that the Prime Minister’s broadcast, delivered while the Model Code remains operative in multiple poll-bound states, bore an unmistakably political tenor, marked by selective narratives and overtly partisan assertions calculated to shape electoral sentiment.

The CPI, in its submission, underscored that the address, transmitted via state-funded broadcasters such as Doordarshan and Sansad TV, constituted an impermissible appropriation of public resources for political messaging, thereby eroding the institutional neutrality that the Election Commission is constitutionally obligated to preserve.

The CPM sharpened its critique by invoking the specific provisions governing parties in power under the Model Code, arguing that the content, cadence and communicative thrust of the Prime Minister’s speech could not plausibly be construed as governmental dissemination, but rather amounted to an overt political intervention.

It was aimed at discrediting opposition parties, including the Indian National Congress, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the All India Trinamool Congress, and the Samajwadi Party, all of whom are electorally engaged in the concerned states, M. A. Baby stated in the letter.

The PM address, which followed the collapse of a contentious legislative effort linked to women’s reservation and delimitation, has thus triggered a wider political backlash, with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge intensifying the charge by asserting that the PM Modi had converted an official platform into a vehicle for partisan invective, thereby compromising both democratic decorum and the constitutional imperative of a level electoral playing field.