Itanagar, March 25: In an environment where people talk about intolerance, the impact will however be very vivid among the voters and it is vital to keep it away from the election perspective. On a similar note, the Legal Rights Observatory has knocked the doors of the Chief Election Commissioner of India by lodging a complaint against “Arunachal Pradesh Christian Revival Church Council” for appealing voters on religious ground in upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
The Legal Rights Observatory highlighted how the “Arunachal Pradesh Christian Revival Church Council” used religious grounds as a medium to woo voters. This ought to be a violation to the model of conduct assigned by the ECI. Signifying a past incident, it added that since many years there are various radical Christian groups spearheaded by Church who are running open election campaigns, appealing voters on religious ground.
The LRO is therefore requesting the Election Commission of India to take stringent action against aforesaid Church which has appealed Christian voters to vote Kyoda Apik who is a candidate from Arunachal West Lok Sabha constituency.
Referring a similar case, it added Supreme Court of India had disqualified Shiv Sena candidate Subhash Desai and revoke voting right of Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thakre about 25 years ago. The LRO also implied on mentioning that during Goa assembly bye-election, Catholic Diocesan official magazine had appealed Christian voters to defeat Former Goa Chief Minister Late Manohar Parrikar who was then BJP candidate. LRO had then lodged a complaint against the same with the ECI with an appeal to take immediate action against the owner, editor of that Catholic magazine and author of the article.
But unfortunately, since last 3 years ECI miserably failed to take any concrete action against all three. By ignoring religion-based election campaigns by Church; ECI directly or indirectly encouraging such fundamentalist, radical Church leaders and push elements which want to reap rich electoral benefits by invoking religious sentiments. Day by day Church interference in electoral process is on steep rise and timely, exemplary action against them is need of the hour.
Source: News Bharati
