Read what Ghulam Nabi Azad said in his notice to Jairam Ramesh after being called Mir Jafar

Former Congress leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad has slapped his ex-colleague Jairam Ramesh with a defamation notice.

Ramesh had referred to Azad as a 'slave, Mir Jafar and vote cutter.' In the defamation notice, Azad has sought compensation of Rs 2 crore for the damage Ramesh caused to his reputation.

Azad said in the notice that Ramesh had intentionally used the name 'Ghulam' to imply 'slave' and this was a deliberate attempt at damaging his reputation.

The notice said that Ramesh had committed an offence under Section 500 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Section 500 IPC lays out the punishment for defamation.

"Mr. Jairam Ramesh in an overwhelmingly and predominantly manner, to quench your thirst with motive to lower down and cause harm to the unblemished life and strong character, integrity made aspersion, imputation by using defamatory language in your statements during press conferences and otherwise also thereby strongly violently criticised directly commenting defamatory remarks," the notice read.

"Admittedly, the reputation of my client has been effected, and there are cogent reason to believe, that there had been big conspiracy hatched by you Mr. Jairam Ramesh to tarnish and cause harm to the reputation of Mr. Azad deliberately, intentionally to lower down the reputation in the estimation of public," it also said.

The notice also said that the statements made by Ramesh had caused Azad mental agony, harassment and torture. He also sought an unconditional apology from Jairam Ramesh within two weeks of the receipt of the notice.

Azad's legal counsel said that if Ramesh fails to respond to the notice within the stipulated time, then further legal action would be taken.

In this context one must note that Mir Jafar is the one who betrayed Bengal Nawab Siraj-ud-Daualah during the battle of Plassey. The name Mir Jafar is synonymous with the word 'traitor.

Ghulam Nabi Azad:

Born in Jammu and Kashmir on March 7 1949, Ghulam Nabi Azad has been a top leader in the Congress for several years. He began his career as a student leader and rose through the ranks of the Congress party.

In 1998 he was elected to the Rajya Sabha and has been re-elected several times since. He retired from the Rajya Sabha in 2021.

Is discontentment with the Congress party became clear when he joined the G-23 rebel group. After being ousted from the disciplinary committee and left out from the star campaigners list for the Punjab assembly elections, it was clear that Azad was on the verge of severing ties with the Congress party.

In his resignation, he blamed Rahul Gandhi for single-handedly destroying the consultative mechanism within the party.