The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to urgently hear a plea by AAP leader Raghav Chadha that he was unnecessarily made to face criminal defamation charges for retweeting Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal about Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
In an urgent mentioning before a Bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Mr. Chadha, represented by senior advocate Anand Grover, said his action of retweeting the Delhi Chief Minister and party leader does not constitute the offence of criminal defamation.
DDCA issue
Mr. Kejriwal and other AAP leaders — Raghav Chadha, Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh and Deepak Bajpai – are facing criminal defamation proceedings for their allegations that Mr. Jaitley was allegedly involved in corrupt practices as the president of the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) from 2000 to 2013.
Mr. Jaitley had responded by denying the allegations and filing a civil defamation suit for ₹10 crore in damages against Mr. Kejriwal and the others. He claimed that the allegations were “false and defamatory”, thereby harming his reputation.
Earier SC ruling
Incidentally, Mr. Kejriwal was one of the petitioners in a bunch of petitions in the Supreme Court to strike down criminal defamation.
But in a 268-page judgment delivered by Justice Dipak Misra (as he was then) last year, the Supreme Court upheld the colonial and pre-constitutional provision criminalising defamation.
The other petitioners included BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, media associations, among others. The court refused exhortations that penalisation of defamation is past its time, and the nation now risks the danger of being reduced to a “frozen democracy.”
The judgment had held that reputation was an equally important right and stood on the same pedestal as free speech.