BJP to initiate legal action against KCR over remarks on Constitution

HYDERABAD: The BJP Telangana unit's legal cell has decided to initiate action against Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao for his comments on drafting a new Constitution for the country and for his unparliamentary remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and union tourism minister G. Kishan Reddy while addressing a press conference at Pragathi Bhavan on February 1.

BJP state unit president Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Monday held a meeting with the party's legal cell to decide on the future course of action against the Chief Minister on this issue. It was decided to file a sedition case against the Chief Minister for his comments on 'rewriting' the Constitution for India.

It was also decided to hold "Change the CM not the Constitution" protests outside all the courts once the physical hearing of the cases commenced across the state. Later speaking to media personnel, former MLC N. Ramchander Rao said the legal cell discussed in length about the TRS government using the police force to foist ‘false cases’ with ‘non-bailable sections’ against BJP leaders and cadres for protesting against the lack of job notifications and other issues throughout the state.

"TRS leaders from the Chief Minister to ministers, MLAs and other leaders are making abusive and unparliamentary comments on BJP leaders including body shaming the Prime Minister. This is unacceptable as TRS leaders have been filing police cases against those making similar comments against them. Their criticism should have been confined to the budget and the government policies but they are resorting to derogatory language against BJP leaders," Rao said.

Stating that the situation in Telangana became worse than Emergency days of the 1970s, Rao alleged that the TRS government was curtailing freedom of BJP leaders and cadres by misusing police force.

"Our president Bandi Sanjay has directed us to fight all such cases in courts and we want to assure our partymen will stand by them and we are not scared of the TRS government,” he added. Rao said the BJP only wanted a ‘review’ on the functioning of the Indian Constitution when it had appointed Justice M. Venkatachaliah Committee during Prime Minister Vajpayee’s reign following ‘due procedures and debates’ and never wanted 'rewriting' of the Constitution as demanded by Chandrashekar Rao.

In the meeting, Sanjay Kumar accused the Chief Minister of trying to divert the people’s attention from the corruption charges his government was facing by seeking to rewrite the Constitution. He said the Chief Minister had no right to continue in the post if he had no trust in the Constitution. He asked the Chief Minister to clarify where he found the Constitution a failure.