NEW DELHI: Senior advocate Ram Jethmalani will no longer represent Arvind Kejriwal in the civil and criminal defamation cases filed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley against the chief minister in the Delhi High Court.
Jethmalani's office said a communication has been sent to Kejriwal to settle the dues of noted jurist.
When contacted, a senior officer in the chief minister's office said, "As far as we are concerned, we have no information with regard to such letter. If at all, Jethmalani is saying so it is a privileged communication."
Kejriwal has replaced Jethmalani with another senior advocate -- Anoop George Chaudhari -- who today appeared for him in the Delhi High Court in one of the defamation cases.
An official from Jethmalani's office said a letter has been sent to Kejriwal but refused to share its contents.
The senior lawyer has asked the Delhi chief minister to settle his fees amounting to more than Rs two crore.
On May 17, the recording of Jaitley's statement in a Rs 10 crore civil defamation suit, filed by him against Kejriwal and other AAP functionaries, witnessed high drama as the Union minister objected to the use of a word against him by the veteran lawyer representing the chief minister.
When the Finance Minister asked Jethmalani whether the word was used as per instructions from Kejriwal, he replied in affirmative.
It has been reported that in a letter to the CM, the senior advocate claimed Kejriwal had used even more offensive language against Jaitley during private discussions on the case.
Days after the court proceedings, Jaitley filed a fresh Rs 10 crore defamation suit against Kejriwal over use of the objectionable word allegedly by the CM's lawyer.
However, Kejriwal later filed an affidavit stating that there was no instruction from him to his counsel to use objectionable remarks against Jaitley in the defamation case.
Earlier, the Delhi government had cleared a payment of Rs 3.5 crore to Jethmalani, which included Rs 1 crore as retainer and Rs 22 lakh as fee for each appearance in court even before the cross examination stage is over.