Karnataka Congress MLC caught allegedly watching porn in state assembly; denies charge

On Friday, some Kannada news channels aired visuals claiming that Congress MLC Prakash Rathod was watching pornographic content on his mobile phone during proceedings in the legislative council on Friday. According to a PTI report, in the video, Rathod can be seen scrolling through some visual content (blurred for the TV broadcast), during the proceedings.

'I will never do such things': Prakash Rathod

However, the former Ranji cricketer has denied the charge and said that he was looking for materials stored on his mobile phone for a question to be posed to the government during the question hour and was deleting certain contents that he had received as the storage was full.

"...when I was looking for question material, as there were too many messages I was deleting them as my phone storage was full ....what you (media) have seen or shown I don't know. I will never do such things or see such things," he said while speaking to reporters. 

Speaking to news agency ANI, Prakash Rathod said, "Whatever is coming on a few television channels is far from the truth. I was not watching any objectionable videos. I was just trying to get my messages regarding the questions that I asked in the council to the Rural Development Minister. The starred question was number seven and I wanted to get some sub-questions which I intended to ask the minister."

In a similar incident in 2012, three Ministers were caught on camera allegedly watching porn clipping on a mobile phone in the state assembly during its proceedings, causing an embarrassment to the then BJP government. The three Ministers had resigned following the incident.

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New Dy Chairman of Karnataka Legislative Council elected

The ongoing session of the Karnataka Legislature began on January 28 and is scheduled to conclude on February 5. BJP MLC M K Pranesh was on Friday elected as the Deputy Chairman of the Karnataka Legislative Council with the backing of JD(S).

In the election held for the post through a process of headcount, the proposal to elect Pranesh, backed by BJP and JD(S) MLCs, secured 41 votes with 24 Congress members voting against it. Congress had fielded senior party leader KC Kondaiah as its candidate.

Chairman K Pratapachandra Shetty declared Pranesh elected after the headcount. The election was necessitated due to the death of deputy chairman S L Dharme Gowda of JDS allegedly by suicide last month.

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(With agency inputs)