New Delhi: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered an extraordinary public speech targeting 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, several opposition parties have flagged the address.Communist Party of India Rajya Sabha MP Sandosh Kumar P. has written to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar urging action over the fact that the speech has violated the Model Code of Conduct in poll-bound states.Kumar wrote:The recent address to the nation by the Prime Minister and BJP leader Shri Narendra Modi was, by all objective assessment, political in nature. It contained partisan assertions, selective narratives, and direct attempts at influencing public opinion on a matter that is under active political contestation.What is even more concerning is that this address was broadcast on national public broadcasters such as Doordarshan and Sansad TV. The use of state resources and publicly funded platforms for disseminating what is essentially a political speech constitutes a grave breach of electoral norms. It undermines the level playing field that the Election Commission is constitutionally mandated to uphold during the period when the Model Code of Conduct is in operation.In his almost 30-minute speech a day ago, Modi named Congress, DMK, TMC and the Samajwadi Party repeatedly. He claimed that they “have committed female foeticide in parliament in front of everyone”. All these parties are in the fray in the Tamil Nadu and Bengal elections.The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has also noted the misuse of the public broadcaster Doordarshan for political messaging while the Model Code of Conduct is in force and elections to the state assemblies of Tamil Nadu and Bengal are nearingThe party has lodged a complaint with the Election Commission of India and has sought proceedings against the prime minister and others for this violation.In a letter to the ECI, party general secretary M.A. Baby noted,“The content, tone, and messaging of the address can by no stretch of imagination be termed as governmental communication. It was blatantly political, targeting the opposition parties – naming many of them – and seeking to influence public opinion, including the voters of Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, in favour of the ruling party.“This constitutes a flagrant breach of the MCC provision laid down in Section 4 under the heading “Party in Power” which states:“Issue of advertisement at the cost of public exchequer in the newspapers and other media and the misuse of official mass media during the election period for partisan coverage of political news and publicity regarding achievements with a view to furthering the prospects of the party in power shall be scrupulously avoided.”Baby wrote that usage of a public broadcaster as a platform for political messaging during an election by the incumbent prime minister “creates an uneven playing field and undermines the principle of free and fair elections,” and urged the ECI to take action.In a post on X, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge noted that Modi is “desperate and frustrated” and had misused official machinery to attack opponents. He wrote:“A desperate and frustrated PM [Narendra Modi] with nothing meaningful to show for the last 12 years, turned an official address to the nation, into a political speech, full of mudslinging, and outright LIES. The Model Code of Conduct is already in place and it was very clear how PM Modi misused official machinery to attack his opponents. This is a travesty of Democracy and the Constitution of India.”In his long takedown of Modi’s claim that the opposition had been anti-women in its stance against the delimitation move, Kharge mentioned the MCC violation again towards the end:“Even with the Model Code of Conduct in place, he chose to blame the Opposition, especially Congress, for his own failures, his own betrayal, and his own apathy.”