K’taka: AAP candidate verbally abused at hotel owned by NA Haris after waiter tries to take selfie

AAP candidate Renuka Viswanathan and her colleagues were abused at a Bengaluru hotel owned by Congress leader NA Haris.

Bengaluru, May 10: The fanboy moment of a waiter in a Bengaluru hotel went horribly wrong on Wednesday evening after the management intervened and rebuked him for trying to take a selfie with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and retired bureaucrat Renuka Viswanathan.

After reprimanding the waiter, the hotel manager allegedly verbally abused Viswanathan and five of AAP volunteers who went to the eatery to have their dinner. Following the incident which took place at The Ocea International Hotel in Bengaluru's Brigade Road, Viswanathan and her colleagues were forced to leave the place without having their food.

Incidentally, the hotel belonged to controversial Congress MLA NA Haris, who is contesting the upcoming Karnataka Assembly elections from the high-profile Shantinagar constituency in Bengaluru. Haris is also a two-time MLA from the constituency.

Sixty nine-year-old Viswanathan, a highly-revered retired IAS officer, is making her debut in the elections by standing against Haris from the same constituency. Thus the whole "ugly episode" clearly indicated that the hotel management got "mighty upset" after it found out that one of its employees tried to take a selfie with the opposition leader fighting elections against their "boss".

Narrating the incident, Vinod Kumar, an AAP volunteer who went to have his dinner with Viswanathan and other AAP members at the hotel, told OneIndia,"We were shocked to see the reaction of the manager. We went to the hotel at around 10 pm last night (Wednesday) for dinner. We had no clue the hotel is owned by Haris. A waiter approached us to take a selfie with us. We obliged. Suddenly, the manager came and he hurled abuses at the waiter. The waiter was immediately taken inside a different room."

"When we asked why he abused the waiter for taking a selfie, the manager started abusing us and accused us of campaigning inside the hotel. We went to have dinner at the hotel like any regular patrons," Kumar added.

Kumar accused that the hotel staff members acted like "goons" and forced them to leave the place. "We are worried about the waiter. Hope he is fine. We wanted to see him, but they did not allow us to meet him. We are planning to visit the hotel again to check if everything is fine with the waiter. If he needs any help, we will help him. The incident is totally undemocratic where a person was abused for trying to take a selfie and others were forced to leave a place," added Kumar.

When OneIndia called the hotel on Thursday afternoon to get their side of the story, the hotel management denied that any such incident took place inside their restaurant.

Of late, Haris has been hogging the limelight for all the wrong reasons. In February, the incumbent Congress government in Karnataka faced a lot of flak after Haris' son, Mohammed Nalapad Haris, was booked for attempt to murder for allegedly assaulting a man in a Bengaluru pub. Reports stated that the Congress was not very keen to give ticket to Haris to contest the polls, however, later the party obliged because he reportedly issued threats to join an opposition party.

The incident involving AAP candidate and volunteers at Haris' hotel has come to light just 48 hours before the state goes to polls on Saturday. A total of 224 seats are up for grabs in the elections. The results of the Assembly elections will be declared on May 15.