Campaigning for BJP’s Hyderabad candidate, Rana had also said: ‘If you vote for Rahul Gandhi or Congress, the vote goes to Pakistan’

Officials said that a complaint was lodged by the Flying Squad Team (FST) of the Election Commission on May 9 stating that portions of Rana’s speech in Hyderabad were in violation of EC rules. (X/ navneetravirana)

By  Sreenivas Janyala

A case has been registered against BJP MP Navneet Kaur Rana for alleged violation of rules of the Election Commission of India – days after her contentious comments during an election rally.

The case, under section 188 of the IPC, was registered at Shadnagar police station under the Cyberabad Police Commissionerate. Officials said that a complaint was lodged by the Flying Squad Team (FST) of the Election Commission on May 9 stating that portions of Rana’s speech in Hyderabad were in violation of EC rules. The FST specifically referred to her statement that “if you vote for Rahul Gandhi or Congress, the vote goes to Pakistan”.

On May 9, a row erupted over the speech made by Rana while campaigning for the party’s Hyderabad Lok Sabha candidate Madhavi Latha a day earlier. Referring to AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi’s speech at Nirmal in Telangana in 2012, in which he said that if police is removed for 15 minutes his community would show 100 crore Hindus what it could do, Rana said, “Akbaruddin said remove police for 15 minutes so they can show what they can do… I say, it may take you 15 minutes but it will take us only 15 seconds.”

This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.