On Wednesday (3rd April), the Delhi state unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced that it had sent a defamation notice to senior AAP leader and Delhi Minister Atishi Marlena. The notice has been served in response to Atishi’s claims that the saffron party approached her through a “very close” person to either join the BJP or face arrest. Delhi BJP has demanded that Atishi should issue a public apology and retract her allegations or show evidence to back her claims.
Delhi BJP Chief Virendra Sachdeva charged AAP leaders as ‘habitual liers’ asserting that this time they won’t let her escape.
Holding a press conference over the issue, the BJP leader said, “We’ve given a legal notice to (Delhi Minister and AAP leader Atishi ) to provide evidence. This time we won’t let her escape. She has to answer and provide evidence for what she is claiming. We asked her to apologise by the evening (Tuesday). She didn’t and so we have sent her a legal notice to which she will have to reply within 15 days.”
#WATCH | Delhi BJP chief Virendraa Sachdeva says, "We've given a legal notice to (Delhi Minister and AAP leader Atishi ) to provide evidence, We will not let her escape. This time she has to answer…"
— ANI (@ANI) April 3, 2024
Delhi Minister Atishi yesterday said that the BJP approached her to join the… pic.twitter.com/HsX44YWncz
#WATCH | Delhi BJP chief Virendraa Sachdeva says, "She (Delhi minister and AAP leader Atishi) is lying and her allegations are baseless and it is in AAP's nature to lie. We had given her time to apologise, but she didn't apologize. So we have sent a defamation notice…"
— ANI (@ANI) April 3, 2024
Delhi… https://t.co/3seCOu5bRQ pic.twitter.com/NWucMKSuFk
As per reports, Delhi BJP media head Praveen Shankar Kapoor has sent the defamation notice.
The legal notice has been sent by Praveen Shankar Kapoor through lawyer Satya Ranjan Swain.
— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) April 3, 2024
The notice states that if Atishi does not withdraw her speech and tender an apology, Kapoor shall be constrained to initiate both civil and criminal, proceedings against her.…
On 2nd April, Delhi Minister Atishi claimed in her so-called “big expose” that BJP tried to poach her through her close associate and threatened that if she didn’t comply, ED would arrest her soon. Incidentally, she made the claims a day after Arvind Kejriwal threw Atishi Marlena and Saurabh Bharadwaj under the bus in relation with the ongoing probe in Delhi Liquor Policy scam.
She had said, “My close associate told me that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP have decided to crush AAP and all its leaders. First, they arrested the top leadership of the party. First, Satyendra Jain was arrested, then Manish Sisodia was arrested, then Sanjay Singh was arrested, and now the chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, got arrested. Now, the BJP has decided to arrest four more leaders of AAP in the coming two months before the results of the Lok Sabha Elections. They will arrest me, Saurabh Bharadwaj, Durgesh Pathak and Raghav Chadha.”
It is pertinent to note that prior to her press conference pre-empting ED arrest, OpIndia had earlier reported that legal troubles were mounting for the AAP leader as she was the AAP Goa In-charge in 2022 when the party spent Rs 45 crores for campaigning which according to ED was ‘proceeds of crime’ generated from the Delhi Liquor policy scam case.
Following the reports, claiming victimhood, she alleged that the ED could call her next for questioning or arrest her, pre-empting ED’s possible actions in the case to cast aspersions.
Nonetheless, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri asserted that BJP has no place for ‘political activists’ like Atishi.
He said, “There is no vacancy in our party for a political activist like Atishi. There is a Yuva leader (Rahul Gandhi) who said that a BJP worker has said that after getting 400 seats, we will destroy the constitution. No one has given such a statement. I don’t think any worker of the BJP will go to Atishi and say such a thing at a time when the whole party is stuck in a liquor scam. Do we need to have a headache by getting them into our party?”
Meanwhile, Atishi has not yet commented on the defamation notice.
