‘We made no mistake’: Congress' Jairam Ramesh on Nitin Gadkari's legal notice

Jairam Ramesh.

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh on Saturday reacted to the legal notices sent by union minister Nitin Gadkari to him and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, saying that they “did not make any mistake”. The Congress leader also asserted that they will respond to the notices soon.

“I have read the legal notice sent by him…We will respond to it. We have made no mistake. We used their own words, I can’t understand why they are upset,” Ramesh said while speaking to news agency ANI.

Gadkari, on Friday, said that Kharge and Ramesh allegedly shared misleading and defamatory news content about him on X (formerly known as Twitter). According to Gadkari’s lawyer, the two Congress leaders posted a 19-second video clip of the minister’s interview with a news web portal – The Lallantop – concealing the contextual intent and meaning of his words.

The video was posted by Congress on X with the caption: “Aaj gaon, mazdoor aur kisan dukhi hai. Gaon mein achhe roads nahi hai, peene ke liye shudh pani nahi hai, achhe aspatal nahi hai, achhe schools nahi hai — Modi sarkar ke mantri Nitin Gadkari (Villages, labourers and farmers are unhappy today. Villages do not have roads, drinking water, good hospitals and schools – Nitin Gadkari, a minister in the Modi government).”

The legal notices claimed that Gadkari’s interview in the video clip was “twisted and distorted”.

“While pursuing the said sinister act, my client’s interview has also been twisted, distorted, and presented on your handle ‘X’ by uploading the above video, which is bereft and devoid of contextual meaning. The same has been done deliberately and consciously with a selected piece of Hindi captions,” the legal notice written by Gadkari’s lawyer read.

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It added, “The contents of the piece of the video clip, which is devoid of contextual intent of interaction as well as a captioned Hindi title, are completely false, scandalous, factually incorrect, are completely afterthought, and are an intentional attempt by you noticees to insult and demean my client, coupled with your intent to provoke members of the Bhartiya Janata Party to develop an ideological rift with my client.”

Meanwhile, Gadkari has demanded a written apology from the Congress leaders within three days and the removal of the video from X.

“This legal notice is calling you to remove/delete the above mentioned post from your microblogging site ‘X’ forthwith and in any event, not later than 24 hours of the receipt of this legal notice, coupled with a written apology to my client within three days, failing which my client would have no other option but to take recourse to all such actions that are open to him, both civil and criminal, at your risk and expense,” the notice said.

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