The Delhi High Court on Monday declined to quash the proceedings against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders in a defamation case over their allegation that the names of 30 lakh voters had been deleted from electoral rolls at the BJP’s behest.
Justice Anoop Kumar Mendiratta dismissed the plea by Mr. Kejriwal and three other AAP leaders — former Rajya Sabha member Sushil Kumar Gupta, Finance Minister Atishi, and party leader Manoj Kumar — saying their imputations were prima facie “defamatory” and made with an intent to vilify the BJP to gain undue political mileage.
The High Court, which had on February 28, 2020 stayed the proceedings, vacated the interim order and asked the parties to appear before a trial court on October 3.
The AAP leaders had challenged a sessions court order which upheld a magisterial court’s decision to summon them as accused in the complaint filed by BJP leader Rajeev Babbar.
Mr. Babbar, in his complaint, had said that the AAP leaders, at a press conference in December 2018, alleged that on the directions of the BJP, names of 30 lakh voters of Bania, Purvanchali, and Muslim communities were deleted by the Election Commission.
The High Court said a political party cannot be allowed to engage in mud-slinging and making “mischievous, false and defamatory” imputations against rival political parties.
“The issue highlighted by the petitioners regarding discrepancies in the list of voters prepared and uploaded on the website of Election Commission may have been crucial and critical from the perspective of citizens, but imputing that the exercise of deletion of names of certain communities was at the instance of the BJP clearly exhibits that the imputations were made with a malafide intent.”
It said the AAP leaders’ defence that the imputations were bonafide and in the larger public good must be established during the course of the trial.
The AAP leaders had sought the quashing of the magisterial court’s March 15, 2019 and sessions court’s January 28, 2020 orders.
