Pratap Sarnaik, a Shiv Sena legislator, submitted a letter to the state legislature secretariat seeking admission of his breach of privilege notice against print and electronic media outlets for defaming him by publishing stories based on a tweet of actor Kangana Ranaut.

Sarnaik, in his letter, has requested the Principal Secretary of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly to forward the notice to the Privilege Committee of the Assembly to initiate an inquiry on it.

The Sena legislator stated, “Some print and electronic media outlets and some people, motivated by political hatred, on social media ran news about recovering a Pakistani credit card from my residence during the searches conducted by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) that led to the defamation of his family.”

In the last week of November, ED had conducted the searches at Sarnaik’s residence and offices in connection with a money laundering case. In this regard, Sarnaik also said, “ED has conducted two raids at my residence and office and has seized many documents but it has not found anything suspicious. ED also has not said anything officially about it. So, I am being defamed by publishing the false and baseless news of recovering a Pakistan credit card from my house. ED inquiry will continue for some days in the future. So, I am submitting the breach of privilege notice against some media outlets for defaming me based on the actor’s tweet and request to forward it to the Privilege Committee for further action.”

In September, Sarnaik had moved a breach of privilege motion against Republic TV’s Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami accusing him of using “derogatory language” and making baseless remarks against Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and NCP president Sharad Pawar.