Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and five other Aam Aadmi Party leaders will face trial in a defamation case filed against them by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, a Delhi court said on Monday. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sumit Dass dismissed a plea filed by the accused, saying it was without any merit and had been “filed solely with a view to stall the trial” in the case, The Asian Age reported.

Dass directed the accused – Kerjiwal, Raghav Chadha, Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh and Deepak Bajpai – to appear before it on March 25, when the court is likely to pronounce its order on the framing of a notice against them. The court’s order comes after the Supreme Court on November 22, 2016, refused to stay the case against the six of them. A similar petition was dismissed by the Delhi High Court, which concluded that the May 19, 2016, decision of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate to proceed in the case was “free from perversity, impropriety, illegality and non-sustainability”.

A Patiala House Court had granted bail to the defendants in April. Jaitley has said that Kejriwal and five Aam Aadmi Party falsely accused him of corruption during his tenure as head of the Delhi District Cricket Association. The minister had also filed a Rs 10-crore civil suit against Kejriwal and the five AAP leaders.