The Delhi High Court today rapped Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for questioning a judge's decision to expedite the hearing of a defamation suit filed by union minister Arun Jaitley against him and five other AAP leaders.
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar also pulled up AAP leader Ashutosh for appealing against the July 26 order of the single judge, saying the court had to answer to the Supreme Court on delay in trials.
"We are duty-bound to conduct trial in an expeditious manner. The single judge cannot be faulted for ensuring speedy trial," the bench said, adding that this applied to every matter being filed in the court.
The judges also asked Kejriwal's counsel why he was filing such appeals.
"Don't you advise your client to bring an end to this case instead of filing such appeals," it asked senior advocate Anoop George Chaudhari, appearing for Kejriwal.
Senior advocates Sandeep Sethi and Rajiv Nayar, appearing for Jaitley, opposed the appeal saying the whole purpose was to delay the matter.
The court had on July 26 directed the joint registrar to expedite the recording of evidence in the civil defamation suit while disposing of an application filed by Jaitley.
Chaudhari contended that a judge could not interfere while proceedings related to recording of evidence was going in a court of the joint registrar.
The bench took objection to the submission and said that they should not "cast aspersions on the single judge". "Is your grievance that the trial is being expedited? This is the first time we are hearing such a grievance by parties to a suit."
It objected to the AAP leaders' contention with regard to allowing only advocates appearing in the case to be present in the courtroom.
The bench stated that the courtroom cannot be converted into public halls.
"Do you want to use the courtrooms for publicity? Both the parties are people of eminence. It is out of consideration of the stature of people involved in the case that the single judge has passed such an order," it observed orally.
The bench further observed that Registrar's courtroom, where the cross examination is to be conducted, is not big enough to accommodate so many people.
On the contention of the arguing counsels that the trial in the case was being expedited merely because the high and mighty are involved, the bench retorted by saying that "the present appeal is not a public interest litigation".
Besides Kejriwal, the five other accused in the defamation case are AAP leaders Raghav Chadha, Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh and Deepak Bajpai.
They had accused the BJP leader of corruption as the president of the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA), a post he had held from 2000 to 2013.
Jaitley, who denied all the allegations levelled by the AAP leaders in December 2015, had claimed that they made "false and defamatory" statements in the case involving the DDCA, thereby harming his reputation.
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