Supreme Court stays defamation proceedings against Arvind Kejriwal, Atishi

“Further proceedings in the case are stayed,” a bench of justices Hrishikesh Roy and SVN Bhatti said on a plea by Kejriwal and Atishi, challenging the Delhi high court order of September 2 that refused to quash the defamation proceedings against Kejriwal and Atishi. The high court order implied that AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal would have to appear before the trial court on October 3 to face criminal defamation proceedings on a complaint of Rajiv Babbar, an authorised representative of Delhi BJP Pradesh committee.

The proceedings stem from allegations made by the two AAP leaders, allegedly accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of orchestrating the deletion of 3 million voters’ names, from specific communities, from Delhi electoral rolls.

The bench, which will take up the case after four weeks, said it needed to examine if Babbar was an aggrieved person under Section 199 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The bench also said that the petition raised a larger issue of whether the threshold for criminal defamation for speeches in political discourse should be higher.