Kejriwal reply in court states documents in public domain back allegations
Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal claimed on Tuesday that the allegations he had made against Union finance minister Arun Jaitley in the Delhi District Cricket Association (DDCA) row were based on “true facts and documents in the public domain” and that his claim that he has high public character was “frivolous”.
Responding to a notice issued by the Delhi high court on a civil defamation suit filed by Mr Jaitley against him and five other AAP leaders, Mr Kejriwal said in a statement filed before the court registrar that he had made the allegations in the public interest to eradicate corruption from sports.
Senior advocate H.S. Phoolka, who appeared for Mr Kejriwal, said the chief minister has said in a written statement that “the allegations are true and have been in the public domain for the last many years”. He said the AAP leaders have submitted over 2,000 pages of documents, along with three CDs, in support of the allegations. It is learnt they have annexed DDCA annual meeting notings which, as per the AAP leaders, establish the allegations against Mr Jaitley. They have also submitted DDCA’s minutes of meetings and phone records. Mr Phoolka claimed the venture (DDCA) did not take any steps to challenge these allegations for all this period, saying, “It raises a presumption of truthfulness of these allegations.” He told reporters that “the allegations are made in public interest to eradicate corruption from the field of sports”.
AAP senior leader and party spokesperson Raghav Chadha, who also filed his response to the notice, claimed that no injury had been caused to the reputation of Mr Jaitley. He maintained that he and the CM have a similar stand and said that Mr Jaitley’s “claim that he enjoys a high public character is totally frivolous and unsustainable”.
“The last time he contested the election to the Lok Sabha was from Amritsar as a BJP candidate in 2014. Despite the success of the BJP, this plaintiff lost by a margin of more than 1,00,000 votes. Indian democracy has never accepted his claim of public character,” they said in their reply. The high court on December 22 last year had sought the response of Mr Kejriwal, Mr Chadha and AAP leaders Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh and Deepak Bajpai on a civil defamation suit by Mr Jaitley seeking Rs 10 crore in damages from them for issuing allegedly false and defamatory statements against him and his family. Mr Phoolka said Mr Kejriwal has questioned why BJP MP Kirti Azad was not made a party to the suit. Mr Jaitley’s action had come against the backdrop of attacks on him by Mr Kejriwal and other AAP leaders over alleged irregularities and financial bungling in DDCA of which he was the president for about 13 years till 2013.
The minister has also filed a criminal defamation complaint in a Delhi court against Mr Kejriwal and the five AAP leaders. In his suit, Mr Jaitley has said that Mr Kejriwal and other AAP leaders, with common intention, have from December 15, 2015, “undertaken a false, malicious and defamatory campaign against him and his family members for political mileage, causing irreversible damage to him”.
It was done to deflect issues from an unrelated search during investigation by the CBI of a bureaucrat in the Secretariat of the Delhi government based on a complaint by a third party, Mr Jaitley has said. Mr Chadha said his party would continue the fight against corruption and all efforts would be made to ensure that the truth in this matter comes out.
Mr Jaitley had filed a criminal defamation complaint against Mr Kejriwal and five other AAP leaders on December 21 last year for allegedly defaming him in the DDCA controversy before a city court which took cognisance on his plea.
Mr Jaitley had said in the Lok Sabha that the allegations against him were baseless and devoid of truth. “For a total sum of Rs 114 crore, we made a stadium with a capacity of taking 42,000 people. Contrary to that, the Congress built the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium spending Rs 900 crores. No one raised doubts on that expenditure.”
Earlier, the ministry of home affairs had declared the Delhi government’s committee, formed to probe the affairs of the DDCA and headed by senior lawyer Gopal Subramanium, as illegal.
