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Congress for administrative order on CD

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Thursday urged the Election Commission to pass an administrative order on the compact disc, as it apprehended that the Bharatiya Janata Party would continue distributing the material containing inflammatory message.

"We asked the Commission to give an administrative order on the CD and told them that it was allowing the BJP grace period so that the party could continue to do what it could do [by distributing it]. So take a decision,'' Union Minister Kapil Sibal said after attending the proceedings at the Commission on complaints by the Congress and other political parties.

Criticises argument

Mr. Sibal, convener of the media coordination committee for the Assembly polls, said at a press conference that the BJP's argument that Election Commissioner Navin Chawla recuse himself was a "gross violation of national justice."

Mr. Sibal said that when a case was being heard by a tribunal, it could not be argued that the other two members decide that the third member should not hear the case, as the member against whom a charge was made could not respond. In such a case, the issue should be taken up before a high court and its decision should be followed.

The BJP, he said, was adopting a strategy to stall the proceedings in the CD issue and described its argument before the Commission as a "last refuge of [a] losing party."

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