Union Minister Nitin Gadkari seved a legal notice to Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Jairam Ramesh for sharing a 19-second clipping from an interview he gave to India Today’s sister channel Lallantop. The Congress leaders have been accused of concealing the context and meaning of Gadkari’s interview with an “intent to create confusion, sensation, and disrepute” to the BJP leader and to “build fissure and rift” within the party.
The notice mentioned that Gadkari’s interview has been “twisted, distorted, and presented on your (Congress) microblogging site ‘X’ wall by uploading the above video which is bereft and devoid of the contextual meaning.”
In the 19-second video shared by Congress, Nitin Gadkari is talking about the poor, farmers and villagers. “Villages, poor, labourers and farmers are unhappy…The villages do not have good roads, there is no water to drink, there are no good hospitals, there are no good schools,” Gadkari can be heard saying.
The video shared by Congress cuts off the earlier part where Gadkari spoke about rural-urban migration and the part after where he spoke about the efforts made by the NDA government to improve the lives of farmers.
Watch the full interview here:
In the legal notice sent by Nitin Gadkari, the Congress leaders have been accused of “inspite of knowing the full content of my client’s (Gadkari) interview…deliberately posted the Hindi captions and video by concealing the contextual meaning of the interaction, which is deliberate and malicious to malign the reputation of my client.”
The Congress leaders have been asked to take down the social media post and to issue a written apology to Nitin Gadkari within three days. The notice mentions that failure to comply with the above conditions would leave them open to civil and criminal suit.