BJP claims Congress leadership behind ministers' utterances

Alleging that comments of Union Ministers Salman Kurshid and Beni Prasad Verma on sub-quota for minorities smack of Congress' arrogance and could not have come without the consent of top leadership, the BJP on Saturday demanded that Election Commission prosecute the guilty.

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley insisted that repeated violation of the election moral code of conduct is being done in a planned manner.

"Again and again the violation of moral code of election conduct is being done. It is planned. This is not a mistake. To mix communal poison in elections is the purpose of such acts. EC has stopped them, still they do it. This cannot happen without the knowledge of party leaders," Jaitley said.

BJP spokesperson and general secretary Jagat Prakash Nadda also spoke on similar lines, saying Verma had with his statement thrown a challenge to the Election Commission in the presence of Kurshid, who had been reprimanded by the poll panel for the same offence.

"The Election Commission needs to think about this issue. The result of its earlier stand when it wrote to the President, is that Beni Prasad has again spoken the same thing. Here a constitutional authority is challenging a constitutional institution," Nadda said.

He alleged that this smacks of arrogance on the part of the Congress.

"The EC should start prosecution proceedings against the guilty. This is a poll offence," Nadda said.