Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been sent a legal notice by SP Udayakumar, the convener of the Peoples Movement Against Nuclear Energy for the former’s criticism that NGOs in the country are receiving support from abroad for stalling the use of genetic engineering in agriculture and leading protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu.
Legal experts called this a rare instance. “I do not know whether any past prime ministers has been served with legal notices by the citizens. This is an interesting development,” said a Madras High Court lawyer.
In a recent interview to Science magazine, Singh said, “These areNGOs, often funded from the US and Scandinavian countries which are not fully appreciative of thedevelopment challengesthat our country faces.”
The PMANE has been spearheading the agitation against commissioning of the two Russian built nuclear reactors at Kudankulam, each of 1000 MW, which has delayed the reactors from going critical.
The legal notice sent on Monday through Udayakumar's lawyer M Radhakrishnan asks the prime minister to make amendments to his comments.
“My client states that you have made this false statement with an intention to harm his reputation. The statements made in your interview amount to an imputation which directly, in the estimation of the members of the public, lowers the moral character of my client and also lowers the credit of my client. Your imputation that the said protest is funded by the United States and the Scandinavian countries is an utter falsehood. This imputation of yours may fall within the realm of ‘defamation’. My client hopes that you, as the prime minister of India, will immediately make appropriate amends to the statements made against my client, and will not drive him to have recourse to law,” said the notice.
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