File photo of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
New Delhi: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday moved the Delhi High Court seeking details of bank accounts and details of tax returns of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and his family over a defamation suit filed against him.
Kejriwal, in his application, contended that he is seeking such financial records of Jaitley and his family members from 1999-2000 to 2014-15, “to disprove” the claims made by the senior BJP leader against him and five other party leaders who were named in the defamation case.
Jaitley had filed the suit in 2015 seeking Rs 10 crore damages from Kejriwal, Raghav Chadha, Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh and Deepak Bajpai.
The AAP leaders had alleged irregularities and financial bungling in the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA), of which Jaitley was the president for about 13 years till 2013.
Jaitley has denied the allegations
Jaitley’s lawyers told PTI that they were yet to examine the application and “in any case, it is extremely mischievous for defendant to circulate the application in the media before it is listed before the court. They are only further adding to their defamatory remarks”.
The application was filed through advocate Anupam Srivastava.
Jaitley, in December last year, had appeared before the High Court to record his evidence in connection with the defamation case.
Apart from the civil defamation case, Kejriwal and the five AAP leaders are also facing a criminal defamation case, which they had attempted to get stayed till the civil suit is decided, but were unsuccessful.
The high court had on July 12 framed issues against Kejriwal and others in the matter, notwithstanding their claim that they had not made any defamatory statement against him in the DDCA case.
(With PTI inputs)