Harish Rao serves legal notices on two Congress leaders

HYDERABAD

Former Minister and BRS Deputy Floor Leader in the Assembly T. Harish Rao has served legal notices on Congress leaders — TPCC president B. Mahesh Kumar Goud, MLC Addanki Dayakar and Sama Ram Mohan Reddy, seeking an unconditional public apology for their ‘false, baseless and defamatory allegations’ made against him.

The legal notices, issued through his counsel, state that Mr. Rao has maintained an unblemished public and political career for decades and alleged that the Congress leaders have deliberately attempted to tarnish his reputation through a malicious campaign aimed at damaging his public image.

The allegations were made with clear political motives and without any factual basis, it is stated in the legal notices. The notices specifically object to the statements claiming that Mr. Rao visited temples to perform occult or tantric rituals with the intention of preventing rainfall in Telangana and causing drought in the State.

The notices describe the allegations as completely false, reckless and defamatory and state that such remarks not only target Mr. Rao personally but also insult the sanctity of temples and hurt the sentiments of devotees by politicising religious practices.

On the other hand, party leaders including MLC Dasoju Sravan, R.S. Praveen Kumar said making such senseless remarks amount to insulting the long-standing cultural and religious tradition/rituals performed by individuals and families by visiting temples after their wishes were fulfilled.

They sought to know whether Rahul Gandhi, former Karnataka Chief Minister K. Siddaramaiah, present Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay, who too performed similar pujas in the past do so with the intentions being cited by the Congress leaders.

Meanwhile, the BRS Vidyarthi leaders lodged a complaint in the Osmania University police station against the Congress leaders for making senseless remarks against Mr. Harish Rao and demanded an apology from the Congress leaders.