By?Akhileshwari Anand Raj
With the Gujarat Legislative elections only a few weeks away, aggressive campaigning has begun in full force. Following the Congress?Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) face off over the success of demonetization, a sex tape featuring Hardik Patel was leaked on 13 November. The tape made its rounds first on local news channels, creating uproar in political circles.
The blame game, with past predictions
In the video, a person alleged to be Patel was seen in a hotel room with a woman. Blaming the BJP for the tape, Patel stated that it was not him in the tape. Claiming that had it been him, he would have readily accepted it, but this was nothing but BJP playing its dirty politics.
Apart from defaming him, he said that this was also an insult to the women of Gujarat. Interestingly, the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) leader had predicted this earlier; he stated that the BJP is capable of forging such videos to bring down on-the-rise opposition leaders. He claims that this was also the case with Sanjay Joshi, where a sex tape was released under similar circumstances. This is not the first time for Patel that such a tape has been leaked?a different sex tape surfaced online at the beginning of his activism in 2015.
The Patidar leader held that the sex tape did not have any effect on his morale or campaign, and called out the BJP for directly interfering and invading his privacy. He stated that the authenticity of the video was tested by several experts, who all found it to be morphed.
He found support from the Congress, whose spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil also voiced their doubt about the authenticity of the tape: ?As the BJP is now staring at defeat, it has resorted to such dirty and shameless tricks. This video clip appears to have been tampered with. The people of Gujarat will avenge it.?
The legality of it all: A ?political? leak
Two primary notifications govern the behaviour of political parties before and during polling: the Election Commission of India?s Model Code of Conduct and Guidelines on Use of Social Media during elections. The former was released in 2014, and the latter in 2013. The Social Media guidelines allow the application of the Model Code of Conduct to content on the internet.
In the Model Code of Conduct applicable to political parties and candidates, two provisions are of special importance with regard to the Patel incident: ?parties shall refrain from criticism of all aspects of private life, not connected with the public activities of leaders of other parties? and ?the right of every individual for peaceful and undistributed home life shall be respected.?
The leak of the sex tape is a clear violation of these guidelines if proven that it was by a BJP party member. The video was uploaded to YouTube by a user named Ashwin Sankarsariya, whose affiliation has not been proven.
A violation of these guidelines will attract a notice from the ECI as to why action should not be taken and why a case should not be registered against the guilty. Notices have been issued in the past to candidates from various political parties for violation of model code of conduct, including Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal.
A few days after the release of the sex tape, further videos have been released in which a person alleged to be Patel is seen drinking and merry-making with a group of other youngsters. The reaction to this by Patel himself and other PAAS members has been, at best, lukewarm. Their stand: one video or a hundred, this does not affect the need for reservations for the Patidars.
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