An Ahmedabad city court has issued a summon to AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh over a defamation suit filed by Reliance infrastructure and other Reliance group companies led by Anil Ambani. The Ahmedabad City Civil and Sessions Court has asked the MP to provide a written submission before the court on 20th October in relation to the ₹ 5,000 crores civil defamation suit.
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The Reliance Group of companies had filed the suit in February this year, over comments made by Singh in a press conference. While addressing the press on February 13, Sanjay Singh had raised suspicions about the deal to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France. He has said that the Rafale deal is ‘the deal of scams’, alleging that Modi government is paying an “astronomical price” for the jets.
The Rajya Sabha MP also had alleged that a contract worth ₹22,000 crore was awarded to Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence to manufacture parts of the fighter plane, despite the company lacking any experience in the field. He had said, “this all proves beyond doubt that this deal is the deal of scams and this is going to be the last nail in the coffin of the government”.
In recent months, Congress president Rahul Gandhi and other Congress party leaders have been making similar accusations. And Reliance group has sent “cease and desist” notices to several politicians asking them to stop making such statements. Reliance and Dassault Aviation both have clarified that the value Reliance deal with Dassault is much less and there was no government pressure to select Reliance as one of the offset partners.
This is not the only defamation case the AAP leader is facing. Last month, a Delhi court had framed charges against Sanjay Singh following suits filed by Ankit Bhardwaj, a leader of BJP’s youth wing Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM).
In May last year, an AAP volunteer named Ankit Bhardwaj had attacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra when he was sitting in a protest, but many AAP members including Sanjay Singh had claimed that the attacker was BJYM leader Ankit Bhardwaj, which had prompted Bhardwaj to file the suit seeking a compensation of ₹1.