After the Election Commission of India ordered Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to modify the campaign song it will put for Lok Sabha elections. The poll panel raised doubts about the deliberate mention of Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest in the lyrics of the song, which, according to them, would reflect poorly on the judiciary and would violate the guidelines and the newspaper advertisement formally accepted standards.
To be precise, the defendant is Arvind Kejriwal, the Chief Minister of Delhi. Mr Kejriwal has also been arrested recently in a money laundering probe about the Delhi liquor policy case. The AAP accuses Modi arrest as a politically motivated one and someone who can work in tandem with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) while he is running for office, which was scheduled to be conducted shortly. Nevertheless, in 2020, the Delhi Court ruled in favour of the legality of the mandamus.
An election commission has directed the AAP to submit the amended version of the campaign song again to rule out the slogan, which is a matter of concern. The expression “jail ke jawaab me hum vote dengue” (we will cast our vote in response to jail) and a picture of Mr Kejriwal coming out of prison have been criticized as being prejudiced against the justice system.
Kejriwal’s AAP member Atishi has protested the ban on their song and blamed the Election Commission for siding with the BJP as it is the first time in the country’s history that a ban has been imposed on a campaign song. She brings forward the so-called bias in the Election Commission, with BJP leaders breaking the Model Code of Conduct and the rules being ignored.
On the one hand, the BJP has the desire for the arrest and conviction of the CM so that Kejriwal resigns from his position as the chief of Delhi’s ruling party. On the other hand, the AAP insists that he will continue to be in charge of the party even from the jail.
