New Delhi, November 18
The shrillness of parties’ campaigns on Monday in the run-up to the elections for the five states — Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Mizoram — indicated a no-holds-barred thrust to the final push for power in these states.

The oft-repeated ‘Shahzada’ remark by BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi (directed against Rahul Gandhi) and a rather delayed repartee by the Congress calling Modi ‘Sahibzada’ (in reference to his being called so in a sting operation involving a woman in a “state-sponsored stalking”) has left no one in doubt about the high states in these polls months before the Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress today took up with the Election Commission Narendra Modi's description of Sonia Gandhi as “ill” and his other controversial comments. The party has demanded withdrawal of recognition to the BJP in view of the alleged “persistent violations” by the party and its leaders which, it said, was an “impediment” in the conduct of free, fair and peaceful elections.

In a complaint to EC, AICC legal cell convenor KC Bansal said Modi has “deliberately and intentionally” made these “derogatory and uncivilised remarks” on more than one occasion against Gandhi as also her son and party vice president Rahul Gandhi.

The party has especially cited Modi’s remarks such as ‘I want to ask Shehzada whether this money has come from your mama's (maternal uncle) place and also ‘if you have courage, Madam you are sick, give work to your son (bete ko kam do)’.

In another low in political discourse, Narendra Modi, who addressed a rally in Sagar (MP) today, “I want to congratulate the mosquitoes of (Bundelkhand) as they had dared to bite shahzade (Rahul), because no one from his family had been touched in the last hundred years.”

At Guna and Chattarpur rallies, Modi dismissed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s charge that the BJP has brought down the level of political discourse. Modi said it was Rahul Gandhi who insulted PM by terming as “nonsense” the Cabinet-cleared Ordinance on convicted legislators.

“The dignity of PM's post was shattered. Who did it? Who has insulted the entire Cabinet? Who has humiliated the entire Parliament? The party of which you are so proud of and the party which has made you to occupy the Prime Minister’s Chair, that party's vice-president had the audacity of calling your decision nonsense,” Modi said at election rallies.

Not to be outdone, the Congress said in Delhi that "it seems to be the strategy of the BJP and its leaders to make personal attacks against Congress leaders. Such remarks have no place or justification in legitimate political discourse and transcends all limits of propriety political or otherwise,” the party contended before the EC in the complaint made on Sunday. — PTI