Finance Minister Arun Jaitley arrives at the Delhi High Court to file a defamation case against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and five other AAP leaders yesterday.
Agencies/New Delhi
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley sued Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for Rs100mn ($1.51mn) yesterday for slander, escalating a battle between the ruling party and the opposition that has stalled key reform legislation in parliament.
Jaitley’s office said he filed civil and criminal defamation cases against Kejriwal and five members of his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Delhi High Court.
Kejriwal, who routed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in state elections this year, accused Jaitley last week of allowing fraud at a cricket association he ran from 2003 to 2013.
Kejriwal’s team said Jaitley should resign or be removed to clear the way for a new investigation, and that they were planning to file a police case against the minister “very soon”.
The other AAP leaders against whom Jaitley has filed the complaint are Kumar Vishwas, Raghav Chadha, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh and Deepak Bajpai.
Jaitley, a top member of the BJP, has said the allegations are baseless and absolutely false. His office said the suit was filed in his personal capacity.
The BJP’s battles with Kejriwal and another with opposition Congress over a corruption case against party leaders Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi, have come at the cost of the legislative agenda in the winter session of parliament.
Already, legislation to institute a national sales tax appeared to have been delayed because of disruptions in parliament.
Modi’s office and the BJP have called a meeting to discuss the allegations against Jaitley. Senior members of the BJP said they backed Jaitley.
The fracas over Jaitley started last week after the Central Bureau of Investigation raided Kejriwal’s office while investigating one of the top bureaucrats in the Delhi government.
Kejriwal accused Modi of waging a political vendetta and branded him as “a coward and a psychopath”, alleging officers were sent to find files related to “the DDCA scam that implicates Jaitley,” referring to the Delhi and District Cricket Association.
Jaitley has since rejected the claims repeatedly and has described them as the chief minister’s “propaganda technique to deflect attention when you yourselves are in the dock”.
Kejriwal hit back at the minister on Twitter after the criminal and civil suits, asking Jaitley to prove his innocence to an independent inquiry committee.
“Jaitley should not try to intimidate us with court cases. Our fight against corruption will continue,” he posted.
A 2014 inquiry into the DDCA unearthed auditing errors and unaccounted expenses that were sanctioned during Jaitley’s tenure.
Authorities unearthed more than a dozen fake contracts and fake companies that operated between 2003 to 2013 to transfer millions of rupees in cash, a senior DDCA official said on conditions of anonymity.
Two senior government officials said a DDCA committee, whose mandate was limited to investigating transactions in the 2013-2014 financial year, does not blame Jaitley but had uncovered “huge financial irregularity”.
Kirti Azad, a BJP lawmaker and former cricketer, has demanded fresh investigations.
Azad said large-scale rigging of accounts was rampant in the cricket board but he did not name Jaitley in the scam.
