Tweets on Jayalalithaa; Supreme Court to hear Subramanian Swamy's plea on quashing of complaints

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court would hear on Monday a plea of BJP leader Subramanian Swamy seeking quashing of six criminal defamation complaints lodged against him for allegedly making some comments against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa in his tweets.

The apex court, which has already stayed the proceedings against Swamy in the complaints, said, "You file the application. We will take it up on Monday."

Swamy, in a fresh plea, gave details of the six criminal defamation cases pending against him in the court of the Principal District and Session Judge at Chennai and said these have been instituted by the city public prosecutor.

"That all the above-mentioned complaints and summons issued therein are bad in law and are liable to be quashed by this Hon'ble Court," the plea said.

Recently, a bench of justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant had reserved a verdict on a batch of petitions filed by persons like Swamy, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal challenging validity of penal laws on defamation.

The court, on different occasions, had stayed criminal proceedings against Gandhi and Kejriwal also.

Defamation cases were filed against Swamy by Tamil Nadu government after he had allegedly made some allegations against Jayalalithaa on social sites.

The court, on October 30 last year, had stayed proceedings in criminal defamation cases filed against Swamy in Tamil Nadu.