New Delhi: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday moved the Delhi High Court seeking details of bank accounts, tax returns and other financial records of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who has filed a defamation suit against him.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo in his application contended that he is seeking such financial records of Jaitley and his family members from 1999-2000 to 2014-15, “to disprove” the claims made by the senior BJP leader against him and five other party leaders who were named in the defamation case.
Jaitley had filed the suit in 2015 seeking Rs 10 crore damages from Kejriwal, Raghav Chadha, Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh and Deepak Bajpai.
The AAP leaders had allegedly attacked Jaitley and his family members in various fora, including social media, over alleged irregularities and financial bungling in the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) of which he was the president for about 13 years till 2013.
Jaitley has already denied all the allegations of financial bungling in the DDCA during his tenure. When contacted, the lawyers for Jaitley said that they are yet to examine the application and “in any case, it is extremely mischievous for defendant to circulate the application in the media before it is listed before the court. They are only further adding to their defamatory remarks”.
The application was filed through advocate Anupam Srivastava. Jaitley, in December last year, had appeared before the high court to record his evidence in connection with the defamation case.
Apart from the civil defamation case, Kejriwal and the five AAP leaders are also facing a criminal defamation case proceedings in which they had attempted to get stayed, till the civil suit is decided, but were unsuccessful in the endeavour.
The high court had on July 12 framed issues against Kejriwal and others in the matter, notwithstanding their claim that they had not made any defamatory statement against him in the DDCA case.
In a civil suit, when one party affirms and other party denies a material proposition of fact or law, then only the issues arise.
Some of the issues framed by the court include whether Jaitley was entitled for any damage for the alleged defamatory statements made by AAP leaders and what should be the amount.
“Whether the statements which are in public domain are actionable or not,” the high court had said in one of its issues.
Meanwhile, the Delhi Police on Saturday filed its status report before a court here in connection with its enquiry into a criminal complaint filed against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his brother-in-law and a government official in the alleged PWD scam.
The report said that the enquiry was in progress into the allegations of irregularities in granting of contracts for the roads and sewer lines here and sought time to conclude it. Delhi Police’s Economic Offence Wing (EOW) filed the report before Metropolitan Magistrate Abhilash Malhotra, who was on leave on Saturday. (PTI)
