Sachin Pilot serves legal notice to MLA Giriraj Singh Malinga, asks to tender apology

Jaipur (Rajasthan) [India], July 22 (ANI): Former Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot on Wednesday served a legal notice to state MLA Giriraj Singh over his allegations that Pilot had offered him money to join the BJP.
Pilot, in the legal notice issued through advocate S Hariharan, asked Singh to tender an apology for issuing a false and frivolous allegation against him.
The legal notice said that Singh made the remarks with the sole intention of tarnishing the image of the former deputy chief minister, gaining political mileage and to accrue undue advantage to his political opponents.
"My instructions are that you have alleged that my client had offered you, the notice, money to switch to the BJP in the month of December 2019. It is surprising that you had remained silent for a period of over seven months and suddenly raked up the bunch of lies solely with a purpose to malign the reputation of my client," the legal notice said.
The notice said that Pilot has never spoken to Singh about switching political party, let alone offering money to do the same.
"My instructions are that much contrary to what has been stated by you in an interview, it was you, who had switched parties in the past for the reasons best known to you. My client stages his strongest protest to such allegation and clarifies that he was never a part of the conversation," the notice said.
It said that the allegations were not only recklessly false and frivolous but were also inspired by malice and vicious animosity.
"We on behalf of our client, hereby call upon you to pay to our client a sum of Rs 1 and to tender a written apology before the press for issuing a false and frivolous allegation, within seven days of the receipt of this notice, failing which we have further instructions to initiate appropriate proceedings criminal and civil litigation," the notice said.
This comes even as Rajasthan Congress continues to remain in turmoil after simmering differences between Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Pilot came out in open. The Congress has also claimed that BJP was trying to buy its party MLAs.
On Monday, the Rajasthan High Court had said that it would decide on the petition filed by Pilot and 18 of his MLAs on July 24 against the disqualification notices issued against them. (ANI)