Two days after Chief Minister Omar Abdullah accused the BJP of trying to topple his government by engineering a split in the ruling National Conference, the saffron party’s Jammu and Kashmir unit on Monday issued a Rs 100 crore defamation notice to him.In the notice, the BJP threatened to “initiate civil and criminal proceedings, including seeking damages to the tune of Rs 100 crore, if the Chief Minister failed to apologise or provide evidence substantiating his allegations”.Omar had claimed that an NC MLA from Jammu told him that a BJP office-bearer, who was also a Supreme Court lawyer, had offered him Rs 20-30 crore, a ministerial berth and statehood to switch sides.“The BJP has served a legal notice on Chief Minister Omar Abdullah over his baseless and defamatory remarks. If he fails to issue an unconditional public apology within seven days, we will be left with no option but to initiate a defamation suit,” said a party spokesman.The notice, served by a Jammu advocate on the directions of J&K BJP president and MP Sat Sharma, stated: “The allegations are false and have been made without any basis to wilfully harm the reputation of my client.”Omar described the notice as a “love letter” and a “great honour”. “I have received a letter from a lawyer, an electronic copy. I consider this a great honour as I am the only politician in Jammu and Kashmir to have been bestowed with a love letter like this by the BJP. I consider it a mark of respect that I am obviously a political force that they cannot ignore,” he told reporters.The Chief Minister said it was “symbolic of the way the BJP fought”. “They take political fights and hide behind the courts. I could have made the same statement and hid behind the Assembly. I could have taken advantage of the privileges afforded to me by making the statement in the Assembly, which cannot be challenged outside the Assembly. But I didn’t,” he said.Omar also said that from now on, the NC would start sending legal notices to “that particular BJP leader who had been levelling unfounded and slanderous” allegations against his party for the past few months.