The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday demanded an apology from Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao after his public relations officer criticised the appointment of governors in a newspaper article, The News Minute reported.

Rao’s Chief Public Relations Officer Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao wrote his article for The Hans India on Sunday, when former Tamil Nadu BJP chief Tamilisai Soundararajan took charge as the Telangana governor.

The article, titled “Gubernatorial gimmicks of modern times”, said the Sarkaria Commission had in the 1980s recommended that a governor should be a person of eminence and “should be a detached figure with little record of participation in the local politics of the state”.

Rao said that the commission further recommended that a politician from the ruling party at the Centre should not be made governor in a state ruled by another party. The panel had also recommended that the chief minister of the state should be consulted before the appointment of the governor.

Rao’s article added that governors have in the past misused their position to secure their political interests. He said the commission had also observed that the appointment of a governor shall not be a means for revival of the national ruling party in the state concerned.

The BJP lashed out at the article. “It’s quite evident that the Chief Minister’s Office is quite rattled on governor’s appointment for reasons only known to them,” the party said in a press statement. The BJP said that the article, unbecoming of a senior government official, cast aspersions on Soundararajan and presumed that she would misuse the office.

“BJP strongly condemns these baseless accusations and presumptive political conspiracy being attributed to a constitutional custodian appointed through due process,” Telangana BJP Chief Spokesperson Krishna Saagar Rao said. The saffron party demanded an apology from K Chandrasekhar Rao, as well as condemnation of the article and action against the chief public relations officer.

However, VJN Rao told The News Minute that the article had nothing to do with Soundararajan. “As a political analysis, generally I have analysed governor, governor’s role, appointments and all,” he said. “It is nothing against one single individual.” VJN Rao also said he had not asked The Hans India to publish the article on the same day as Soundararajan took oath.

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