A Bhopal court today stayed an arrest warrant against Uma Bharti in 2003 defamation case. (File)
The Bhopal district court today overruled a lower court order directing arrest of Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti for failing to appear in a defamation cases filed against her by senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh.
Additional District Judge Ramkumar Choubey suspended the warrant issued by the magistrate's court after Ms Bharti's lawyer Harish Mehta said that her statement could be recorded through a lawyer, and her presence in the court was not necessary. The case was not of a serious nature, Mr Mehta said.
On Thursday morning, Chief Judicial Magistrate Bhubhaskar Yadav issued a warrant against Ms Bharti in a 13-year-old defamation case. He directed senior police officials to execute the warrant and arrest Ms Bharti.
Her lawyer, Mr Mehta, had earlier argued that she could not appear in court as she was to chair a meeting regarding the Cauvery water sharing dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Mr Yadav however dismissed the plea, observing that the Union Minister had not appeared before the court to record her statement since October 2015 and enough time had been given to her. In February, the then Chief Judicial Magistrate Pankaj Singh Maheshwari had asked Ms Bharti and Digvijaya Singh to settle the dispute out of court.
The Congress leader had filed the case against Ms Bharti in 2003, when she was the BJP's chief ministerial candidate for the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls, after she alleged that a multi-crore rupees scam had taken place during Mr Singh's tenure as chief minister between 1993 and 2003.