JOIN USWhen BJP corporator Katte Sathyanarayana was being sworn in at the BBMP Council as the Mayor of Bangalore on Wednesday afternoon, minister Dinesh Gundu Rao and Congress corporator T Mallesh allegedly exchanged heated words under the same roof.
The verbal duel between the two Congress leaders took place at the Leader of Opposition M K Gunashekar’s chamber around 2.30 pm. Rao, the food and civil supplies minister, had arrived there to witness the swearing-in ceremony and was taking rest in Gunashekar’s chamber.
His followers, gunmen and some corporators were with him.
Mallesh approached him, demanding that he be made the next Leader of Opposition as no Dalit corporator had been elevated to that position. Mallesh alleged that no sooner did he make the demand than the minister allegedly abused him and asked him to get out of the room. It is learnt that Mallesh objected to it and allegedly tried to attack him. Other corporators, however, pacified Mallesh.
An aggrieved Mallesh then lodged a complaint against Rao at the Ulsoorgate police station under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
‘Filthy language’
Confirming the incident, Mallesh said the minister used “filthy language” against him. “The moment I made the request, he began calling names and asked me to go away. When I retorted, I was driven away from the chamber. The allegations that I manhandled him is baseless because he was surrounded by his loyalists and gunmen, who would have shot me dead had I dared to even touch him,” Mallesh narrated.
He added that Rao had a grudge against him for demanding a Congress ticket from Gandhinagar Assembly constituency from where the former was the sitting MLA. Attempts to contact Rao proved futile as he did not return phone calls.
B R Ravikanthe Gowda, DCP (Central), told Deccan Herald that Mallesh, the councillor of Subhash Nagar ward, had filed a complaint about the incident. However, he did not press it further and hence no case has been registered against the minister.