The Election Commission had issued a show-cause notice to the Law Minister in 2020 for his objectionable social media posts.
| Photo Credit: FILE PHOTO

A court here on Thursday asked the police to submit the report on Law Minister Kapil Mishra’s “inflammatory posts” on social media which drew charges of violation of the model code of conduct during the 2020 Delhi Assembly election.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Vaibhav Chaurasia directed the Deputy Police Commissioner (North West) to procure the data from social media platform X.

The court posted the matter for argument on charges on April 8.

‘Promoting enmity’

On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court had refused to immediately stay the trial court proceedings against Mr. Mishra. Earlier this month, a court here had dismissed the revision petition filed by the Minister against the summoning order of the trial court, observing that the statements made by Mr. Mishra appear to be “a brazen attempt to promote enmity on the grounds of religion by way of indirectly referring to a ‘country’ which in common parlance is often used to denote the members of a particular religion”.

During the poll in 2020, the Election Commission (EC) had issued a show-cause notice to Mr.Mishrafor his statement that “a mini-Pakistan was being made in Delhi”. The EC has also taken cognisance of another social media post by Mr.Mishra in which he had said “February 8 will be India vs Pakistan in Delhi”. February 8 was the date of the 2020 Delhi poll.

The EC had found Mr. Mishra’s replies to be “unsatisfactory”, after which an FIR was lodged against him on the complaint of the Returning Officer. He was booked under Section 125 of Representation of the People Act, 1951, which deals with promoting enmity between citizens in connection with an election.

Act.