New Delhi: The Supreme Court is slated to hear Tuesday a plea filed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal and former Delhi Chief Minister Atishi seeking quashing of summons issued against them in a defamation case over their remarks on the alleged deletion of voters’ names from electoral rolls.
As per the causelist published on the website of the apex Court, the matter is listed before a Bench comprising Justice M.M. Sundresh and Justice N.K. Singh.
Earlier, in a major relief to Kejriwal and Atishi, the top court had stayed further proceedings in the defamation case filed against them by BJP leader Rajiv Babbar, observing that political discourse has to be placed at a “higher threshold”.
In its interim order, a then Bench headed by Justice Hrishikesh Roy (now retired) had stressed that the question of whether a political party could be treated as an aggrieved person for instituting a defamation suit would require a deeper examination.
“Issue Notice returnable in four weeks. In the meantime, further proceedings shall remain stayed,” the Supreme Court had said.
In September 2024, the Delhi High Court refused to interfere with the trial court’s summoning order issued to the AAP leaders for the commission of offences under Sections 499/500 of the now-repealed IPC (Indian Penal Code).
Dismissing the petition, it said: “The defence taken by the petitioners that the imputations were made bona fide and in the public good, needs to be proved and established during the course of trial”.
“The imputations in the present case are prima facie defamatory, with the intention of vilifying the BJP and gaining undue political mileage by attributing that the BJP was responsible for the deletion of names of about 30 lakh voters belonging to particular communities,” added a single-judge Bench of Justice Anoop Kumar Mendiratta.
Justice Mendiratta further said that “a political party hardly has any role in addition or deletion of the names in the voters’ list, as the said task is assigned to the Election Commission to be taken in accordance with law”.
In March 2019, the trial court had summoned Kejriwal, Atishi, and Sushil Kumar Gupta, along with Manoj Kumar, on a complaint filed by Babbar, the authorised representative of the BJP Delhi unit. In his complaint, Babbar claimed that the AAP leader addressed a press conference alleging that, at the direction of the BJP, names of 30 lakh voters from Baniya, Purvanchali, and Muslim communities had been deleted by the Election Commission. Aggrieved by the Delhi High Court’s refusal to interfere with the summons issued by the trial court, Kejriwal and Atishi had approached the Supreme Court, seeking the quashing of the entire proceedings.
