Cornered Virbhadra files libel suits against , Jaitley , Dhumal and sons

Shimla : Beleaguered by alleged corruption charges of late the Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh on Thursday hit back at his political opponents by slapping three criminal defamation suits in a court here. Thursday .

“I have filed three libel suits , against senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley and former chief minister P.K.Dhumal . Two other suits have been filed against Dhumal’s sons Anurag Thakur and his younger brother Arun Dhumal ,” Virbhadra told reporters here .

“All of them have been running a malicious , frivolous and filthy campaign against me without taking my version .I have been compelled to file a criminal defamation case in the Shimla CJM’s court here ,” he said .

He said the BJP has been carrying out this sort of mud-slinging against me for the past over ten years but he had been exonerated by the court in several cases .

Virbhadra acknowledged that he and his wife had taken a personal loan from Wakkamullah Chandrasekhar “We are paying back the loan with interest in instalments ,” he said .

Virbhadra accepted that his family members have purchased shares in a subsidiary private company of the same corporate house .

He said the Sai Koti hydro-power project owned by Chandrasekhar was not given any favours by his government .

“But it is a fact that BJP gave four extensions to this project while the Congress gave only one extension and even this was terminated after seven months,” he claimed .

“Why doesn’t the BJP approach the Lok Ayukta as it is headed by an eminent judge of the Supreme Court who was appointed during the last BJP regime ,” he said .

The chief minister was flanked by almost his entire cabinet except two . The notable absentee was the health and revenue minister Kaul Singh .

Immediately after reading out his statement to the media the chief minister decided not to take questions and abruptly walked away saying he was heading to Delhi for a high-level Congress party meeting .