The Delhi High Court on Wednesday, 15 May, declined to entertain a PIL filed by a BJP leader seeking directions to the Election Commission to "restrict" misuse of religion for poll gains. The High Court also asked the EC to decide BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay's representation against the remarks of actor-cum-politician Kamal Haasan, that "free India's first extremist was a Hindu", referring to Nathuram Godse who killed Mahatma Gandhi.
The petition was mentioned before a bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice AJ Bhambhani by Upadhyay, who has also sought debarring of candidates and de-registration of parties which misuse religion for electoral gain.
The bench had allowed the plea to be listed for hearing before an appropriate bench.
Meanwhile, in a separate case, a criminal complaint was filed against the actor-cum-politician at Delhi's Patiala house court, for allegedly hurting “religious sentiments of Hindus by associating terrorism with Hindu religion”.
The complaint, filed by Vishnu Gupta, President of Hindu Sena, has been registered under sections 153a/295a of the Indian Penal Code.
Through the complaint, Gupta had alleged that Haasan, while addressing a huge gathering of Muslim population in Aravakurichi Assembly constituency of Tamil Nadu, made "remarks with malafide and criminal intentions to ridicule Hindu religion and promote feelings of enmity/hatred among Hindus and Muslims."
Addressing an election campaign in Tamil Nadu’s Aravakurichi on Sunday, Haasan had said he was one of those "proud Indians" who desires an India with equality and where the "three colours" in the tricolour, an obvious reference to different faiths, "remained intact."
"I am not saying this because this is a Muslim-dominated area, but I am saying this before a statue of Gandhi. Free India's first terrorist was a Hindu, his name is Nathuram Godse. There it (terrorism, apparently) starts," news agency PTI had quoted Haasan as saying.
The hearing in the matter will take place in Delhi’s Patiala House court on 16 May at 2 pm.
(With inputs from ANI and PTI)
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