Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, the wife of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, has filed a Rs 10 crore defamation suit against Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi for "false" allegations of irregularities in a food processing project.Senior advocate Devajit Saikia, her counsel, told PTI that the case has been filed at the Court of Civil Judge (Senior Division) of Kamrup Metropolitan on Friday and it will be moved on September 26.
My client has claimed a defamation of Rs 10 crore against Gaurav Gogoi for various tweets on X. We have made it very clear that we never made any application to receive subsidy," he added.Saikia further claimed that the process to seek subsidy has not been initiated at all and for which, a show cause notice was slapped on his client's firm on May 26 this year, followed by an email from the Ministry of Food Processing."The approval for the project was given on November 22, 2022. In the last email, we were told that our claim would lapse if we didn't submit our proposal. We are not responding to anything to seek subsidy," he added.
Whatever Gogoi stated on social media about Sarma and her entity 'Pride East Entertainments', that information was not based on facts, claimed the senior advocate.He (Gogoi) did not do his homework. Getting approval for a project does not mean that a subsidy has been received. We will fight the case tooth and nail," he asserted.