By IANS,
New Delhi : Hitting out at the Election Commission for its strictures against him, Varun Gandhi said Monday that he was deeply disappointed “over the unseemly haste” shown by the poll panel in passing its opinion over his allegedly hate speeches.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh said he had not been given a “fair opportunity to appear in person or through counsel” to establish his innocence.
“It is astonishing that such harsh censure should be used without any attempt to ascertain the truth,” Varun Gandhi said in his reply to the Election Commission, a day after the poll panel held him guilty of making communally inflammatory campaign speeches.
The Election Commission had said the “two speeches (by Varun Gandhi) contained highly derogatory references and seriously provocative language of a wholly unacceptable nature against a certain community”.
Not sparing the BJP, the order stated: “Any sponsorship of his candidature by the BJP, or any other political party, at this election would be perceived as endorsing his unpardonable acts of inciting violence and creating feelings of enmity and hatred between different classes of citizens of India, destroying the social, democratic and plural fabric of the country.”