A Delhi court on Tuesday issued a summons to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Atishi in relation to the defamation case filed by the Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson, Praveen Shankar Kapoor, over her claims that the party had tried to topple the AAP government by contacting 21 of its MLAs and offering each of them Rs 25 crore to switch sides. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who was also an accused in the case, has not been summoned by the court. No prima facie case was made against Kejriwal to issue summons to him, said Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Tanya Bamniyal. On this, Kejriwal posted on X: “I said earlier that they will arrest Atishi next. They (BJP) are planning to do so now. Complete dictatorship. In completely flimsy, frivolous and false cases, they are arresting ALL leaders of AAP one by one. Every single opposition leader will be arrested if Modi ji comes back to power. AAP is not important. Saving our dear country from dictatorship is important…” Atishi on April 2 had held a press conference, claiming that she was approached by the BJP to join them or else she would be arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) within a month. “They (AAP leaders) are trying to portray that the BJP is trying to subvert the government by illegal means,” Advocate Amit Tiwari, representing Kapoor, told a Delhi court earlier. Referring to a Twitter post by the CM on January 27 and a press conference held by Atishi on April 2, Tiwari stated before the ACMM Tanya Bamniyal's court that the AAP leaders alleged that the BJP had offered Rs 20-30 crore to procure certain AAP MLAs. “Whenever the ED approached AAP leaders in relation to the excise policy case, baseless allegations were made by them… to play the victim card. They damaged the reputation of the BJP,” Tiwari had earlier said, who was assisted by advocates Shoumendu Mukherji and Megha Sharma. While refusing to issue a summons to Kejriwal, the Delhi court referred to his tweet and said that the CM had only mentioned words like ‘inhone’, ‘unka’, ‘unhone’, ‘yeh log’, ‘inki’ and ‘inke’ to attribute that seven out of 21 AAP MLAs were contacted by the BJP. ". these words or imputation are neither specific nor attributable to any identifiable person. In the considered view of this court, such words as stated above are too vague and general in nature, and per se, do not denote any identifiable person," held the court.
