Digital Desk: After accusing Himanta
Biswa Sarma and his wife of corruption and irregularities in the supply of PPE
kits at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Manish Sisodia was summoned by an
Assam court on August 19 to appear before it on September 29 in connection with
a defamation case filed against him by Sarma.
Here, we examine a few politicians
who have engaged in legal battles over defamation:
Jayalalitaa vs Subramanian Swamy
Tamil Nadu's chief minister J.
Jayalalithaa filed a defamation lawsuit against BJP leader Subramanian Swamy in
a Chennai court in 2014 over his comments regarding the issue of the state's
fisherman being held in Sri Lanka, in which he claimed that the boats seized by
Sri Lankan authorities belonged to Sasikala, the chief minister's close friend.
She believed that Swamy's statement had caused animosity and concern among the
Tamil Nadu populace as a whole as well as among the fishing community.
One year later, in 2015, Jaylalithaa sued
Swamy for defamation when the latter made a "malicious" tweet about
the chief minister's health and claimed it was done so to damage her
reputation. The Supreme Court criticised Jayalalithaa in 2016 for abusing the
defamation law as a strategy to avoid criticism. During her six terms as the
chief minister of Tamil Nadu, she filed over 1,000 defamation cases in an
effort to silence her rivals, including members of the press and political
opponents.
Nitin Gadkari vs Arvind Kejriwal
2014 saw the filing of a defamation
lawsuit by BJP politician Nitin Gadkari against Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader
Arvind Kejriwal after the latter gave out a list of "corrupt people"
prior to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections that included Nitin Gadkari's name.
Gadkari said that by adding his name on a list of India's most corrupt
individuals, Arvind Kejriwal had defamed him. In February 2014, Kejriwal
appeared in court in Delhi as an accused person. Kejriwal refused to ask for
bail because he insisted he was not a criminal. The trial court then decided to
place him in judicial detention. In 2018, Kejriwal expressed regret to Gadkari,
and the two of them then jointly applied to a Delhi court to have the
defamation case closed.
Arun Jaitley vs Arvind Kejriwal
After Arvind Kejriwal's former
attorney Ram Jam Jethmalani allegedly abused him and used scandalous language
in open court during the proceedings of an initial defamation suit against
Kejriwal and five other AAP leaders, where he alleged that Kejriwal and his
counsel had made a false statement during cross-examination, accusing Jaitley
of corruption during his tenure as the hr minister, Jaitley filed a 10 crore
defamation suit The claim was denied by Kejriwal. He later offered an apology
to the Union minister, who accepted it, and as a result, a joint application to
resolve the issue was filed with the Delhi high court by him and his five party
colleagues.
Rajesh Kunte vs Rahul Gandhi
Following the Congress politician
Rahul Gandhi's speech at Bhiwandi in the Thane region, in which Gandhi claimed
that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was responsible for the murder of
Mahatma Gandhi, an activist for the RSS named Rajesh Kunte filed a defamation
lawsuit against Gandhi in 2014. Kunte said that his remarks damaged the RSS's
standing. Gandhi was accused with defamation in connection with this case by a
Thane court in 2018, however he pled not guilty to the accusations.
The court declared in 2022 that the trial in Gandhi's
defamation case would start on a daily basis on February 5. Gandhi requested an
exemption, stating that he had to be in Delhi to vote in the vice-presidential
election because he was a member of Parliament (MP), and Kunte was also unable
to attend the hearing, so the court postponed it until October 22.
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