Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra
| Photo Credit: FILE PHOTO

A Delhi court on Friday dismissed the revision petition filed by BJP leader and Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra against the summoning order of a trial court in a case related to violation of the model code of conduct during the 2020 Assembly poll through “communal slurs and hate speech”.

At that time, the Election Commission (EC) had issued a show-cause notice to Mr. Mishra for his objectionable statements in electronic media and posts on social media platform X, such as “February 8th [the date of polling] will be India vs. Pakistan in Delhi”.

The EC found the BJP leader’s replies to the show-cause notice “unsatisfactory”, and an FIR was lodged against him on the complaint of a Returning Officer. Mr. Mishra was booked under Section 125 of the Representation of the People (RP) Act (promoting enmity between classes of citizens).

Delhi Police had filed a chargesheet in the case on November 1, 2023, and a supplementary chargesheet on March 4, 2024.

During the hearing, Mr. Mishra’s counsel claimed that his statements “nowhere refer to any caste, community, religion, race, or language but to a country” that is not prohibited under the RP Act.

However, special judge Jitendra Singh stated, “The word ‘Pakistan’ is very skilfully weaved in his alleged statements to spew hatred, careless to communal polarisation that may ensue in the election campaign, only to garner votes. Thus, accepting the submission that revisionist has not referred to any grounds mentioned in Section 125 of RP Act explicitly… would be blatant negation of the spirit of the Act.”

The court remarked that the BJP leader’s statements appear to be a brazen attempt to promote enmity on the grounds of religion by indirectly referring to a ‘country’, which unfortunately, in common parlance, is often used to denote the members of a particular religion.

“This submission is simply preposterous and outrightly untenable, the implicit reference underlying the particular ‘country’ in the alleged statement is an unmistaken innuendo to persons of a particular ‘religious community’, apparent to generate enmity amongst religious communities. This can be effortlessly understood even by a layman, let alone by a reasonable man,” added Justice Singh.