Vishwas apologises to Arun Jaitley, targets Arvind Kejriwal

NEW DELHI: Rebel AAP member Kumar Vishwas on Monday withdrew all allegations against finance minister Arun Jaitley in Delhi high court and apologised by way of a letter laced with sarcasm against chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw disposed of the Rs 10 crore defamation suit after Jaitley’s counsel said it was acceptable.

Vishwas said in his letter that he blindly trusted Kejriwal on the corruption charges since he is AAP’s leader. He also alleged that Kejriwal apologised because he couldn’t risk being removed as CM in order to serve a brief jail term for criminal defamation. “The legal experts told Kejriwal that if his allegations turn out to be false, he might have to go to jail and in that case, he will have to quit as CM and offer his post to deputy CM Manish Sisodia. In such a situation Manish would not leave the CM’s post after Kejriwal comes out of jail,” Vishwas wrote.

“Arvind used to show us papers saying he had collected the same as proof against various leaders. Like any other party workers, we trusted him. When a leader takes a stand after a public statement, the workers repeat his words. We too, without questioning, trusted our leader’s illogical words,” the letter read.

Vishwas was the only one against whom Jaitley’s suit remained as Kejriwal and four other AAP leaders—Raghav Chadha, Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh and Deepak Bajpai—had previously apologised to Jaitley. On April 3, HC had accepted a joint application made by Kejriwal and AAP leaders to seek withdrawal of a civil defamation case filed by Jaitley against them.
Vishwas had earlier told the court that before tendering any apology to Jaitley, he wanted to know if Kejriwal lied. Vishwas claimed that AAP didn’t provide him documents or shared crucial information about the case. “The party has removed a lawyer who agreed to fight my case,” Vishwas said.

Countering his charges, AAP said Vishwas was trying to target Kejriwal after being denied a Rajya Sabha ticket. “Almost 10,000 pages of documentary evidence related to DDCA were filed by AAP functionaries in HC. Vishwas knew about it and can obtain it easily from there and pursue the case if he wishes to,” AAP Delhi chief spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj said.

Vishwas said he wasn’t consulted before Kejriwal decided to apologise, and the apology was like a commander running away from the battlefield while putting his soldiers in harm’s way. “The metamorphosis of Kejriwal who fought for Swaraj into a flea sticking to the chair is surprising and unimagined even by his rivals,” Vishwas said.