Locals watch as a large banner of jailed Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal hangs from the balcony of a building during his wife Sunita Kejriwal’s election roadshow for the Lok Sabha polls, in New Delhi, on April 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PTI
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday said the legal team of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has raised strong objection to the affidavit filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) opposing interim bail for him in the Supreme Court. The party said a complaint has been lodged with the Supreme Court’s registry denouncing the ED’s affidavit as a “blatant disregard of legal procedures”, considering that the matter is already slated for a final decision in the top court on Friday.
Calling Mr. Kejriwal’s arrest an unprecedented assault on the tenets of democracy based on ‘free and fair elections’ and ‘federalism’, both of which form significant constituents of the basic structure of the Constitution, the party in a statement said the Chief Minister was arrested five days after the Lok Sabha election was announced and the Model Code of Conduct was put in place.
“The ED has not only been opaque and dictatorial in its approach but also guilty of suggestio falsi (suggesting falsehood) and suppressio veri (suppressing truth). The ED abused its power of arrest in the middle of general election and while relying on the same material as was in possession months before his arrest,” the AAP said.
Questioning the ED’s objection to the interim bail of Mr. Kejriwal, the AAP said it is well known that even after two years of investigation by the ED in the alleged liquor scam, not a single rupee or piece of evidence has been recovered incriminating anybody in AAP and the agency has relied solely on the statements of four accused turned witnesses, Magunta Reddy, Sarath Reddy, Satya Vijay Naik, and a close aide of an ex-BJP Chief Minister, with direct links to the BJP.
“These statements indicate a pattern: These persons were arrested, they made multiple statements which did not implicate Mr. Kejriwal. The ED repeatedly objected to their bail, they made statements implicating Mr. Kejriwal and then they were granted bail/pardon without the ED objecting to it,” the AAP said. It added that all the statements where there is no allegation against Mr. Kejriwal were deliberately ignored by the ED.
“During an election cycle when political activity is at its peak, Mr. Kejriwal’s illegal arrest has caused grave prejudice to the AAP and will provide the BJP at the Centre an unjust upper hand in the ongoing elections. A level playing field, which is a prerequisite for ‘free and fair elections’, has clearly been compromised with the illegal arrest of Mr. Kejriwal,” the AAP said.