Arun Jaitley does right by approaching courts
There can be opinions in favour of and against Union Minister for Finance Arun Jaitley in connection with alleged irregularities in the functioning of the Delhi and District Cricket Association during the Minister's tenure as its chief. But when such opinions take the shape of specific allegations against not just a person but also his family members, then those making the charges have to produce credible evidence while levelling accusations.
If they don't or cannot, then the aggrieved person has the choice to either engage in a verbal, often acrimonious, duel on public platforms or approach the court for redressal. Mr Jaitley has correctly chosen the latter option, given that those making the allegations by name excel in public slander and love nothing more than a dirty, often gutter-level spat in the public domain to not just tarnish the image of a person without proof but also use the occasion to push their own stature up by a notch or two by taking on powerful persons. leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party led by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal have decided to let both decency and propriety fly out of the window while targeting Mr Jaitley over the DDCA controversy.
In conference after Press conference, they have levelled serious allegations against the Union Minister without bothering to provide a shred of evidence. Some of the party's spokespersons even alluded to pecuniary benefits that Mr Jaitley's family members supposedly gained during the Minister's tenure at the DDCA chief. Enthused by the AAP's wild allegations, the Congress too has jumped into the act and been demanding Mr Jaitley's resignation. The Minister then took the sensible step of filing defamation cases against a clutch of AAP leaders, including Mr Kejriwal, in the courts.
Given that the Supreme Court is seized with a separate bunch of petitions by people ranging from different political parties, seeking the scrapping of the criminal defamation law and challenging the constitutional validity of Sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code on the ground that they violated the Fundamental Rights of a citizen, Mr Jaitley must have thought it prudent to file civil defamation suits in addition to criminal defamation cases. Incidentally, while the next hearing on Mr Jaitley's criminal defamation cases is scheduled for January 5, it is also in the same month that the pleas challenging the criminal defamation provisions of the IPC are likely to be heard.
But that apart, the issue at hand is that leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party will have to soon respond to the courts, and then they will not be able to get away with the puerile rhetoric they have resorted to until now against Mr Jaitley. Nor can they can take recourse to the stand that the Minister has to clear his name before a probe panel headed by a lawyer which the AAP has constituted. The panel, established by an over-enthusiastic Delhi Government, does not have greater legal standing than the courts of law; and it is to the latter that the slander-mongering AAP leaders will be answerable to in the coming months. Perhaps Delhi's ruling party is aware of the sticky wicket it is on, which is why it is concentrating its energies not on the flimsy evidence it has but on the so-called one-man inquiry commission it has instituted.