Chennai: Tamil Nadu BJP general secretary K T Raghavan, a prominent face of the party, resigned from his post on Tuesday hours after a party member released on YouTube a sleazy video call showing Raghavan and an unnamed woman, who was described as a party district level functionary. While Raghavan claimed he will prove his innocence legally, party State president K Annamalai announced that his resignation was accepted and a panel will probe into the allegations.
Raghavan is a household name in Tamil Nadu thanks to his frequent appearances on Tamil television news channel debates representing the BJP over the past decade. A party member, Madhan Ravichandran, who is also a journalist, claimed that Raghavan had indulged in inappropriate behaviour during a video call with the woman functionary. Claiming that he had similar sleazy videos of about 15 other party leaders, Madhan said he chose to release Raghavan’s video after Annamalai told him over a WhatsApp chat that he was free to release the video, “if you really want justice for the woman.”
With meme makers having a field day over the ‘expose’, courtesy the Brahmin, non-Brahmin divide in the Dravidian State, Raghavan announced his resignation on Twitter. Claiming that the video was an attempt to malign him and the BJP, he said “truth will prevail”.
Later in a statement, Annamalai acknowledged that Madhan had approached him stating that he had sleazy videos of leaders and sought “immediate action” against them. However, he had refused to hand them over to him making it difficult to act without talking to the parties concerned and verifying the video. Hence he had merely said that Madhan could release the video if desired.
The State BJP president said state secretary Malarkodi will head a committee to probe the video and the charges. He added that since Madhan had released the video instead of handing them over to the party, he alone would be accountable for it and its consequences
Meanwhile, Congress MP Jothimani submitted a complaint addressed to the Director General of Police seeking an investigation into the incident.
