Hyderabad: Telangana’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi has lodged a complaint with the Election Commission of India against former Governor of Telangana and Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry Tamilisai Soundararajan, over her alleged distribution of miniature replicas of the Ram temple at Ayodhya at a campaign rally.
Soundararajan allegedly gave the replicas away while campaigning for the BJP candidate from the Secunderabad Lok Sabha seat, G. Kishan Reddy.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
The BRS has added with the complaint a photograph of Soundararajan handing the replicas to voters at the MLA Colony of Banjara Hills. It has demanded action against her for the violation of the model code of conduct.
The BRS highlighted that the MCC bars the use of religion for election purposes. By distributing a religious symbol, Soundararajan sought to leverage religious sentiments to influence voters, it has claimed.
The party demanded that Soundararajan be barred from participating in future election campaigns and that Kishan Reddy be disqualified from contesting elections.
Soundararajan had joined the BJP immediately after resigning from her dual posts in March. She had stepped down after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was in Hyderabad for a BJP rally in the run up to elections.
She was the president of Tamil Nadu unit of BJP until she was appointed as the Governor of Telangana in 2020. She had a controversial stint here, during which she often locked horns with then chief minister and BRS chief K. Chandrashekhar Rao.
She refused assent to quite a few Bills passed by the state legislature and claimed that the government did not observe protocol due to the governor’s post and that it had insulted her by not allowing her to address the assembly. The government, in turn, did not celebrate Republic Day officially to avoid her presence.
The BRS and the government also accused her of turning the Raj Bhavan into a “BJP office,” claiming that she worked as a party functionary and not a constitutional authority.
Soundararajan had been camping in Hyderabad for the past few days, since elections in Tamil Nadu concluded. She contested from the prestigious Chennai South constituency for BJP against Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam candidate Thamizhachi Thangapandian. She had lost to DMK’s Kanimozhi from Thoothukudi constituency in the 2019 elections.
