AAP allegation, malicious and tarnishing Jaitley’s reputation, says his advocate

The Court asked AAP leaders to file their reply within three weeks and fixed 5th February as the next date of hearing. While Kejriwal and Vishwas were not present in the high court, four of the AAP leaders – Ashutosh, Sanjay, Raghav and Deepak, attended the proceedings.

Senior Bihar BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi on Tuesday demanded disciplinary action against party MP Kirti Azad for targetting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over the DDCA issue.

Jaitley has been accused of corruption by the Delhi Government and former players including Kirti Azad and Bishan Singh Bedi during his tenure as president of DDCA till 2013.

Jaitley also reached the Patiala House Court in the company of several party leaders and ministers where, as his supporters raised slogans in his support, he filed a criminal defamation complaint against Kejriwal and AAP leaders.

Kejriwal has demanded that Jaitley must resign or be removed as the union minister to enable a free and fair probe into the DDCA issue.

“Our argument was that all the allegations made by the AAP are wrong, baseless and malicious”.

Azad had yesterday addressed a press conference in the national capital but did not take the name of Arun Jaitley, under whose charge as president of DDCA he claimed there were financial bunglings.

Briefing reporters after the meeting, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu quoted Modi as having said that BJP leaders like Sushma Swaraj, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje had similarly faced such “wrong” charges from Congress earlier.

“So the defamation case should have been filed against me”.

Jaitley said on the contrary, the mere renovation of Jawaharlal Nehru stadium for Commonwealth Games 2010 had cost the government Rs 900 crore and renovation of Dhyanchand stadium was to the tune of Rs 600 crore. “Jaitley should not try to scare us by filing cases against us”.

Asked about reports that bricks and pillars were being brought to Ayodhya for temple construction, he said that there has been consensus that there should be no further activity there and the BJP is also part of that consensus.