Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

Arvind Kejriwal’s lawyer senior advocate Anoop George Chaudhari, who was representing him in Arun Jaitley’s defamation case, has announced that he will no longer be appearing for the Delhi chief minister after he was put in an “embarrassing situation” due to inadequate briefing.

Chaudhri wrote a letter to Kejriwal’s instructing counsel Anupan Srivastav and said that he is “withdrawing from the case due to inadequate briefing which resulted in an embarrassing situation before Justice Endlaw on 12th of February.”

The senior advocate was referring to an order passed by Delhi High Court judge Justice Endlaw which prohibited Kejriwal’s lawyers from asking non-specific questions and making suggestions while finance minister Arun Jaitley was to be cross-examined. Despite this order, questions prepared by Srivastav for Jaitley’s examinations contained several suggestions.

Chaudhari also said that some other important details pertaining to an order passed by another High Court judge, Justice Manmohan, were not brought to his notice on time. He wrote that Kejriwal is bound to suffer “because of this lackadaisical and casual approach in briefing” and he would most certainly not want to be a party to it.

This is the second time a senior advocate has recused himself from representing the Aam Aadmi Party chief in this matter. Noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani had also earlier stopped appearing for him after they faced disagreements regarding consent by Kejriwal to use derogatory words like “crook” while examining Jaitley on oath.

Following that incident, BJP leader Arun Jaitley had amended his complaint and had sought Rs. 10 crore more in addition to his original defamation suit against Kejriwal and five other AAP leaders, including Raghav Chadha, Kumar Vishwas, Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh and Deepak Bajpai.

By dhruv