Congress Hammers Away, Wants Jaitley Out

The BJP leader first filed the civil defamation case in the Delhi High Court and the criminal defamation case against AAP leaders at the Patliala House court later.

Jaitley said the allegations levelled by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders will cause “irreversible damage to his reputation”.

With Opposition escalating its attack, BJP on Tuesday said the campaign against Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will “fail” in the same manner as their earlier attempts to target its leaders proved futile.

Following a CBI raid in Delhi Secretariat in connection with charges against Kumar, AAP has been claiming that the central agency carried out the searches to target the AAP chief and was looking for a file relating to alleged graft in DDCA.

Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal continued to take aim at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the CBI raids conducted at the former’s office last week.

“The protest led by Delhi BJP general secretaries Ashish Sood and Rekha Gupta was aimed at exposing the Kejriwal government for saving its corrupt official by raising the DDCA issue in Vidhan Sabha”, said Delhi BJP media in-charge Praveen Shankar Kapoor. “What is the message the government was sending by allotting a bungalow to (complainant) Subramanian Swamy on the eve of the Gandhi family’s court appearance?” a key strategist said. “I wish the case was against me because I am the one who raised this issue”, said Azad.

Sisodia claimed that the government has the requisite power to constitute such a Commission of Inquiry to probe alleged corruption in DDCA “as sport falls in the state list”.

“Today I heard Prime Minister saying that Jaitley will come out of this like L K Advani in the Jain Hawala case”.

Jaitley told the court that he did not take “a single penny” from DDCA and Kejriwal and others have made defamatory and baseless allegations.

Naidu, who also hold the portfolio of Urban Development, said ministers in the past have done “many things” or spoken but the Prime Minister has never been dragged in like being done now.

Jaitley also said that the meeting of minds between the Congress leadership and Azad resulted in a plan to target him. He had said that the DDCA, headed by Jaitley for 13 years till 2013, gave out contracts to fake companies, paying them crores of rupees in cash, and had fudged the audit of accounts.