The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chairman Arvind Kejriwal and Delhi Chief Minister Atishi were ordered to appear before a trial court on October 3 for criminal defamation proceedings. The Supreme Court on Friday scheduled September 30 as the date to hear an appeal against that judgment.
This follows the Delhi High Court’s September 2 refusal to halt the defamation lawsuits filed against Atishi and Kejriwal.
The legal procedures are a result of claims made by the two leaders that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was responsible for removing the names of three million voters from particular communities from the election records in Delhi. The AAP leaders were also ordered by the high court to show up for the trial court hearing on October 3.
The hearing was postponed until September 30 by a Supreme Court bench made up of justices Hrishikesh Roy and SVN Bhatti after the complainant’s attorney, Rajiv Babbar, the vice president of the BJP in Delhi Pradesh, stated he was not notified that the case had been listed despite having filed a caveat. A proviso guarantees that the court will never issue an order without first hearing from the person that filed it.
“We were treated unfairly by the Supreme Court registry. Despite our caveat, we were only informed last night, leaving us unprepared,” Babbar’s senior attorney Sonia Mathur told the judge.
Senior attorney Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who was representing Kejriwal and Atishi, responded by saying he had no issues with the adjournment.
The hearing was therefore rescheduled by the bench for September 30.
In its ruling on September 2, the high court declared the AAP leaders’ remarks to be defamatory and implied that they were made in order to obtain “undue political mileage.” Sushil Kumar Gupta and Manoj Kumar, two other AAP leaders, were also included in the slander lawsuit.
The Delhi High Court’s single-judge bench observed that the charges made by the AAP leaders seemed to imply that the incumbent BJP had engaged in corrupt activities by removing names from the voter records in order to sway public opinion and voter decisions. It further stated that the comments damaged the BJP’s standing and reduced public confidence in the organization.
The summons that the magistrate court had issued in response to Babbar’s complaint was upheld by the trial court’s ruling, which Kejriwal and the other AAP leaders had disputed. During a news conference in December 2018, Babbar claimed that the AAP leaders had tarnished the BJP’s image by wrongly accusing it of ordering the Election Commission to remove voter names, especially those of Muslims, Bania, and Purvanchali.
Declaring the complaint to be “politically motivated,” the AAP leaders attempted to have the orders from the sessions court on January 28, 2020, and the magistrate court on March 15, 2019, set aside. Moreover, they maintained that Babbar was not a party that was upset.
The high court, however, rejected these arguments, pointing out that the AAP leaders’ assertions of good faith could only be proven in court. It emphasized that political parties cannot use the media to spread false accusations against their rivals in order to further their own political agendas, even though citizens have a constitutional right to accurate information.
October 3 is still the date set aside for the trial court hearing.