BJP MP Nishikant Dubey files criminal defamation case against ex-Finance Secretary Subhash Garg

Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey said on Monday that he has filed a criminal defamation case against former Finance Secretary Subhash Garg, escalating a public dispute that began with Garg's remarks about a purported 2018 meeting.

In a post on X, Dubey said he had decided to "correct this bad behaviour" of the former bureaucrat, who he said had mentioned a meeting with him in his office. Dubey asserted that since becoming an MP in 2009, he has never visited the office of the Government of India, arguing that under protocol a Secretary ranks below a Member of Parliament.

He also challenged Garg to produce any letter he had written regarding transfers or postings since 2009, and said that anyone who could provide information about such letters or an office meeting would prove their claim. Dubey added that for the person he blamed for ruining the country's economy, the only path was jail.

The legal action follows a wider feud sparked by Garg's questioning of official first-quarter GDP growth data. Dubey responded by reviving an old conflict, sharing a letter he had sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March 2018, when Garg was Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs — a post he held before being elevated to Finance Secretary in March 2019. In that letter, Dubey had urged the Prime Minister to review Garg's macroeconomic framework, and he later recalled on X that he had described the former Finance Secretary as ignorant at the time.

Speaking later on a podcast, Garg said the letter was dated March 2018 while the transfer occurred in 2019, and accused Dubey of blackmailing. He alleged that Dubey had come to his office once to ask him to direct the LIC chairman to do his work, and that when he asked why he was being told this since LIC was not under his control, he refused. Garg said the work concerned transfers and contracts, and that no one takes Dubey's warnings seriously.

It was this comment that prompted Dubey to file the defamation case. Dubey rejected any suggestion that he had visited Garg's office during his tenure, calling Garg a despicable man and challenging him to say whether he had ever visited the office of any secretary in Delhi or Ranchi. He said he would not be able to recognise the District Collector or Superintendent of Police of his own district, and that he had not even seen their faces.

Dubey noted that at the time Garg refers to, he was chairman of the Direct and Indirect Taxes committee under the Public Accounts Committee, and that the chairman has the right to summon any secretary. He told reporters that he wanted to expose Garg's lies, that he had filed a criminal defamation suit, and that Garg must publicly apologise or face jail.