NEW DELHI: A court on Friday summoned Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and others in a defamation case filed by the BJP over his comments on deletion of voters’ names from electoral rolls in Delhi.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal directed Kejriwal, Rajya Sabha member Sushil Kumar Gupta, MLA Manoj Kumar and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) spokesperson Atishi Marlena to appear before the court on April 30.
BJP leader Rajeev Babbar, who moved the petition on behalf of the party’s Delhi unit, has sought legal action against them for harming the reputation of BJP by blaming it for deletion of names of “voters” from electoral rolls.“All the accused made accusations against BJP in a calculated manner with the sole intention to portray a negative image of BJP in relation to the voters belonging to certain sections of society, namely, Bania, Poorvanchalis, Muslims, among others. The reputation of the complainant has been damaged beyond repair,” Babbar said.
Babbar alleged that Kejriwal had defamed the BJP and those associated with the party. “The statement of the accused (Kejriwal) was made with ulterior motives to degrade the reputation of the BJP to gain cheap political mileage in the upcoming elections,” Babbar said in his plea.“Allegations of the respondents (Kejriwal and others) are prima facie defamatory and refers to complainant Bhartiya Janta Party,” the court said.
The inquiry as contemplated under section 202 of the Code of Criminal Procedure has been duly conducted by examining the authorised representative of complainant and his witnesses to arrive at the conclusion for this stage of this case. Therefore, in view of the aforesaid discussion, there exist sufficient grounds to proceed against all the respondents,” it said.
The court had earlier taken cognisance of the defamation complaint filed against Kejriwal and others by Babbar, which alleged that they had made certain “deliberate and malafide” defamatory statements against the BJP.He claimed the AAP leaders had, during a press conference held in December last year, alleged that on the directions of BJP, names of 30 lakh voters from the Bania, Poorvanchali and Muslim communities had been deleted by the Election Commission of India.
The allegation was also tweeted by Kejriwal.
“It is stated that adding or deleting the names of voters is the role and responsibility of Election Commission, which is a constitutional body. The Election commission doesn’t add or delete the names of voters on the direction of a political party,” the complaint said.It further said that the poll panel has also refuted the allegations of the AAP leaders as “baseless and without facts”.“According to Election Commission, addition and deletion is a regular exercise to be undertaken by them,” the complaint said.