It is battle royal in the streets of Delhi. What started as a political brawl is now being dragged to the court. Yes I am talking of the tussle between Finance Minister Arun Jaitkey and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
Jaitley has personally gone and filed a defamation suit against AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal, Deepak Bajpayee, Ashutosh and Raghav Chadha seeking Rs 10 crore damages for ‘slander’ and baseless charges in the DDCA scam.
In a show of solidarity several BJP members and functionaries including Smriti Irani, Piyush Goyal, Venkaiah Naidu accompanies Jaitley when he went to Patiala Court to file the case at 2 pm on Monday, December 21. This act can be seen as a direct retaliation of AAP members charging the senior BJP functionary with corruption over alleged irregularities at Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA).
Quite expectedly Kejriwal on his part responded to this by tweeting that, Jaitley should not attempt to scare AAP leaders and should instead cooperate with DDCA proceedings. The AAP government has even called a one-day session of the Delhi assembly today to discuss the matter which BJP claims is out of its ambit.
The Patiala court meanwhile has set January 5 as the next date for hearing and I am sure it will be no less action packed than the cricket games played in DDCA grounds. Ram Jethmalani is said to be defending the AAP members. Reports indicate that the Finance Minister paid the whopping Rs 9.80 lakh stamp duty from his own pocket to register the Rs 10 crore defamation suit. The finance minister said the allegations were made to deflect the attention from “a CBI search of a bureaucrat in the secretariat of the government of NCT on December 15. Apparently, this malicious propaganda of false and baseless allegations is not only with a view to deflect the incident of CBI search of a bureaucrat but is also an orchestrated mala fide design for ulterior political motives of the defendants against plaintiff”.
For now all eyes on January 5 and the action that is set to be unravelled then.
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