Karnataka elections had the political leaders conducting speeches and rallies. And in these speeches, they accuse one another, at times bordering on the lines of defamation.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has filed a Rs 100 crore defamation case against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP chief Amit Shah, the party itself and its chief ministerial candidate BS Yeddyurappa for calling his government “seeda rupaiya government” and several other charges.
Prime Minister Modi has coined a number of names for the Siddaramaiah-led Karnataka government during his election rallies and said there was “ease of doing murders” in Karnataka and that it was a “10% government” that takes a commission to do a job.
On Monday, Siddaramaiah’s lawyers sent a legal notice filing civil and criminal defamation charges against PM Modi and others, seeking “an unconditional public apology”, failing which they will have to pay him Rs 100 crore for damages.
The Karnataka Congress chief has accused the BJP and its supreme leaders of making “baseless, false and untrue remarks” against him.
The notice read: “… you are called upon to cease and desist from making such statements forthwith and give an unconditional public apology immediately through electronic, print and social media etc in which the statements and advertisements have appeared”.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on May 1 assailed the Congress government in Karnataka for initiating the culture of “ease of doing murder”, as he launched the second leg of his campaign blitz in the state for the Assembly elections. He also accused the successive Congress governments at the Centre of allowing a handful of people to “loot” banks while denying loans to poor. Modi said, “We want to encourage the ease of doing business, they (the Congress) have initiated the culture of ease of doing murder,” he told another election rally in Udupi.”
Siddaramaiah’s notice states, “Mr Narendra Modi, Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, have unabatedly made several defamatory and untrue statements in your speeches in Karnataka during the election campaign.”
The notice further specifies the dates and rallies that PM Modi and others made the remarks of calling his government “Seeda Rupaiya Sarkar”.
The notice also talks of Siddaramaiah’s controversial diamond-studded Hublot watch, which has found a spot for itself in the Karnataka election discourse. His lawyer states, “My client had received the watch from his friend as a gift and he has paid required tax for it and on the floor of the Karnataka Assembly declared the source of the watch and handed it over to the Hon’ble Speaker to treat the same as an asset of the state.”
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