The Election Commission hearing on the petition against the Bharatiya Janata Party with regard to the release of a CDÂ containing communal content during the party's election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, has been postponed to Thursday.
Arguments on the validity of the presence of the Election Commissioner Navin Chawla during the hearing dominated the proceedings on Wednesday. The party's arguments were put forth by senior leader Arun Jaitley.
Briefing media persons, BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad repeated the charge against Chawla that while the case against the latter was pending in the highest court of the land, he cannot hear the petition against BJP, as he could be biased in his opinion.
"This is a quasi-judicial proceeding and no one from the bench should give the impression that he is biased. Hence we want him to disassociate from the hearing while the petition signed by 205 parliamentarians is awaiting hearing in the Supreme Court," Prasad said.
"The commission will hear the matter on Thursday as the BJP did not give the documents against Navin Chawla. BJP has now provided copy of the documents to other parties and we will respond accordingly. The commission will give its ruling on the presence of Navin Chawla and hear the controversial CD matter on Thursday. The BJP is resorting to diversionary tactics," charged Union Minister Kapil Sibal.
He said that there was no question of Chawla not being present during the hearing, headed by Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswamy, as he was very much a part of the commission.
Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Nilotpal Basu accused the BJP of raking up issues against Chawla to gain time as its petition against Chawla was coming up for hearing in the Supreme court on Friday.
Meanwhile, Navin Chawla has come under scanner for misusing his authority when he was chairman of the Delhi Vidyut Board. News channels have come out with a detailed report on Chawla and quoted the Auditor General's report to point out glaring examples of misuse of authority.
