Mangalore : Vijaynath Vittal Shetty, industrialist who recently joined the Congress, has  termed the recent controversy over his saffron clothing as an unfortunate controversy.

In a press communiqué he said “I am deeply distressed to note that there is a lot of noise over certain observations made by our senior leader Mr. Janardhan Poojary regarding me wearing saffron clothes during my joining ceremony and Swami Vivekananda 150th Birth Anniversary Celebrations.”

“ I hereby wish to reaffirm that I have the highest respect for Mr. Janardhan Poojary as he is an old soldier of the Congress party. He is held in high esteem for being non-corrupt and lakhs of poor people have benefitted from his hard work, which we should not forget. As Mr. Poojary himself later clarified, his observations were taken out of context and I feel it would be highly disrespectful to a man of his stature to harass or humiliate him on the pretext of this non-issue,” Shetty added.

About his choice of clothing, Shetty said he has always been wearing   saffron and will continue to do so. “I had appraised the party leaders regarding this before joining the party,” he said adding colour is not important; what really matters is the work we do for the people. “I appeal to one and all to treat this matter as closed and request party workers to focus on working for the party and the people and continue empowering the party at the grass roots level,”Shetty added.