MARGAO: Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidate Churchill Alemao has served a legal notice to his rival, Benaulim’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Venzy Viegas for defamation. The notice was served by TMC’s and Alemao’s advocate Sanjay Basu.

Basu has accused Viegas of having made false, malicious, disparaging, unverified and unsubstantiated defamatory statements and insinuations against TMC and Alemao at press conferences held on January 5 and January 10, 2022.

The notice had a transcript of all that Viegas including labelling Alemao as the ‘Don of Benaulim’, accusing him of ‘Dadagri and indulging in ‘Didigiri’, and alleging that the Benaulim MLA and his daughter Valanka had taken Rs 50 crores each to switch to TMC. Viegas also told TMC at that press conference that Goa and Goans are not for sale amongst other charges and that he was not scared of any cases being filed against him.

“The statements contained in the aforesaid speech were not only false, but the same were false to your own knowledge. A bare perusal of the video footage makes it clear that you have resorted to such cheap tactics in order to gain political mileage at the expense of my client’s reputation,” said Basu.

The advocate further pointed out that these videos were also published and circulated on AAP’s official Facebook page, to defame TMC and Alemao and to lend an air of authenticity to the slew of false allegations and derogatory remarks.

It may be recalled that Alemao had recently spoken about how a defamation case should be filed by TMC against the Benaulim’s AAP candidate’s statements.