New Delhi: At a time when several political parties have flagged what appeared to be a blatant violation of the Model Code of Conduct by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had a partisan speech shown on public broadcast channels, the Election Commission of India has on Wednesday (April 22) responded to a complaint by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over what appears to be a comment by the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. The poll body has asked Kharge to reply in 24 hours.The action came just hours after a high-level BJP delegation met the election commission over the remarks made at a press conference in Chennai on the final day of campaigning for the Tamil Nadu assembly elections on Tuesday.The notice also comes just a day before polling in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.Kharge was criticising the opposition All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) over its alliance with BJP. He had reportedly said: “How can they (AIADMK) join with Modi? He is a terrorist. And he doesn’t believe in equality. His party won’t believe in equality and justice. And these people are joining with them, it means that they are weakening democracy, they are weakening the philosophy of Annadurai, Kamaraj, Periyar, Kalaignar, and Baba Saheb Ambedkar.”Following backlash from the saffron party, Kharge clarified to reporters that what he meant was that “Modi is terrorising people and political parties” and that he did not actually call the prime minister a terrorist. It is noteworthy that more than three days since Modi’s address to the nation on April 18, the ECI has been silent over the speech. Over 700 concerned citizens have signed a complaint to the poll body, noting Modi’s poll code violation through his national address. The signatories included former bureaucrats, activists and academics. Citing MCC provisions, the signatories had noted that this gave undue advantage to the ruling party and undermined a level-playing field.Opposition parties Congress, CPI(M) and CPI also have flagged the MCC violations, with the Left parties formally lodging complaints to the ECI.Modi, in his extraordinary public speech, targeted opposition parties after his government’s efforts to operationalise women’s reservation through a contentious plan to expand the Lok Sabha and enter into a delimitation process was defeated in the lower house. He named Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC) and DMK among other parties. The TMC and DMK are key players in states which will go to polls tomorrow.The Congress has responded sharply to the notice. Senior leader and party general secretary Jairam Ramesh, in a post on X, said that the ECI is a constitutional body but “its behaviour is an assault on the Constitution and a disgrace for which this CEC bears the heaviest responsibility”.“That the Election Commission dances to the tune of the PM and HM has been obvious for some time. After masterminding vote chori in very many lakhs – especially in West Bengal – today it has given fresh evidence of its functioning as an attached office of the Home Ministry,” he said.