Modi in police trouble as India’s poll nears climax

AHMEDABAD, India: Police opened an investigation against Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi, tipped to be India’s next prime minister, after he flashed his party’s symbol and made a speech in a violation of election rules after he cast his ballot.
About 139 million people were registered to vote in the eighth round of a marathon contest pitting Modi against the ruling Congress party, led by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Results are due on May 16. Voting in his home state of Gujarat, the opposition leader, whose pro-business policies have delighted investors, brandished a white cut-out of a lotus flower and made a scathing speech against Congress heavyweights - taunting them for shying away from the fight.

“The prime minister himself is not fighting the election. The finance minister is not fighting the election. All its top leaders have run away,” Modi said to cheers from a crowd at the polling station in the state’s largest city, Ahmedabad.

He snapped a “selfie” of the lotus and his finger painted with ink after voting, and posted the photograph on Twitter. Election rules say politicians must not make public rallies or use media to “display to the public any election matter” within 48 hours of an election.

Gujarat police chief PC Thakur said a preliminary case was launched against Modi at the request of the election commission. “The Ahmedabad crime branch has begun investigations,” he said. The maximum punishment for violating the rule is two years imprisonment, although Modi is unlikely to be charged.

Politicians in India routinely face criminal cases that rarely reach the courts. Standing in both the Gujarat town of Vadodara and the holy city of Varanasi, Modi has shaken up Indian politics with a campaign that has combined a social media blitz with up to five rallies a day. The 63-year-old has even appeared as a hologram campaigning in remote hamlets. Turnout in Gujarat was 62 percent on Wednesday, according to the election commission, a sharp rise on the state’s tally of 48 percent in the last general election in 2009.