Hyderabad: The Election Commission of India has banned the Congress’ election advertisements on television and social media platforms that featured a pink car (BRS symbol) and and BRS supremo KCR’s look alike.
On November 7, the Telangana Congress launched a series of advertisement campaigns to mock KCR and BRS. The ads have gone viral since then.
However, after a complaint from BRS, the ECI has written to television channel management as well as social media platforms to stop airing the advertisements and asked them to remove the content immediately.
This happened after a meeting of all recognised political parties organised by the ECI on Saturday, November 11.
During the meeting, objections were raised on certain advertisements being telecasted to defame their opposition. Following the meeting, BRS complained to Telangana CEO Vikas Raj stating that the Congress’ ads violated EC norms.
Accordingly, the EC withdrew approvals to 15 advertisements including six from Congress, five from BJP and four from BRS, for violation of the campaign regulations enforced by the MCMC.
However, the BRS argued that several news, entertainment channels and other social media platforms were still airing the advertisements despite ban orders from the EC.
On the other hand, TPCC vice-president Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy while addressing a press conference in Gandhi Bhavan, said that the party would approach the court against the ban on ads that the EC panel had approved earlier.
Ban Reventh from campaigning, says BRS
Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has urged the Election Commission of India to remove TPCC chief Reventh Reddy from the list of Congress campaigners for the upcoming Telangana Assembly elections.
BRS general secretary Soma Bharat Kumar on Monday, November 13 submitted a petition to Chief Electoral Officer Vikas Raj.
In his complaint, he accused Revanth Reddy of repeatedly inciting Congress workers into attacking BRS candidates.
Seeking immediate action against Revanth, Soma Bharat appealed to the ECI for his disqualification from the campaigning for violating the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) regulations in the country.
The BRS legal cell head further stated that in less than two weeks, two BRS candidates, Kotha Prabhakar Reddy (Dubbaka) and Guvvala Balaraju (Achampet) were attacked by the Congress leaders and activists.
While Prabhakar Reddy was attacked by a Congress worker during the campaign in Dubbaka, Balaraju was attacked by Congress candidate Vamshi Krishna and his friends.
“Despite us lodging complaints with the authorities concerned about 20 hours ago, there has been no arrests. TPCC president A Revanth Reddy is trying to create an atmosphere of fear and threat to life of the people,” he said.
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