Arun Jaitley has accepted AAP leader Kumar Vishwas' apology over a defamation suit
Highlights
- Kumar Vishwas gave a written apology in a Delhi court
- Arun Jaitley's lawyer said the BJP leader has accepted the apology
- Mr Vishwas had targeted Mr Jaitley over cricket body DDCA
Finance minister Arun Jaitley has withdrawn a Rs 10 crore defamation suit against Aam Aadmi Party leader Kumar Vishwas after the Delhi politician apologised for calling the union minister corrupt.
"We have accepted it (apology)," Mr Jaitley's lawyer Manik Dogra said after the AAP leader submitted a written apology in the Delhi High Court.
Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said that Mr Vishwas has withdrawn all the allegations he had made against the BJP leader.
Other AAP leaders -- Arvind Kejriwal, Raghav Chadha, Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh and Deepak Bajpai -- who had accused Arun Jaitley of corruption during his 13-year tenure as the boss of Delhi's cricket association DDCA, had already apologised, leaving Kumar Vishwas as the
only person to face the defamation suit, until today.
In early April, Arun Jaitley and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had moved joint petitions before a Delhi court to settle the two-year-old defamation suit after Mr Kejriwal gave a written apology to Mr Jaitley.
"Though we belong to two different political parties, I believe that we should end the unsavoury litigations between us..." Mr Kejriwal had written. He had been on an apology spree to extricate himself from a tangle of defamation suits.
In a previous hearing, Kumar Vishwas had told the court that
before apologising to Arun Jaitley, he would want to know if Arvind Kejriwal lied when the chief minister said his allegations against the union minister were based on reliable documents.
Mr Vishwas had then told the court that he needed more time to decide what kind of statement he would give to ensure the defamation case against him is dropped.
When the Delhi chief minister apologised to Arun Jaitley, Mr Kejriwal was derided by BJP leaders on social media.