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Chair­man of the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says po­lit­i­cal par­ties have adopt­ed a more re­spect­ful tone in their plat­form speech­es com­pared to pre­vi­ous elec­tion cy­cles. How­ev­er, the Coun­cil is con­cerned about re­ports of van­dal­ism on the cam­paign trail.

“We not­ed, to a large ex­tent, that this elec­tion cam­paign has been clean­er than the past in terms of what was said on the plat­form, the ground cam­paign is a dif­fer­ent thing al­to­geth­er. There have been laps­es but they have been in the form of lan­guage, then there is the van­dal­ism that we have to talk about,” he said.

Dr Ra­goonath said mem­bers of the Coun­cil have been as­sess­ing the cam­paign and will re­lease a de­tailed re­port on its find­ings. A snap­shot of the da­ta point­ed to con­cerns about the use of deroga­to­ry lan­guage among oth­er in­frac­tions.