New Delhi. The Delhi High Court on Thursday refused to stay the hearing against former Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor Arvind Kejriwal for the time being. Kejriwal is accused of irregularities related to Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22. Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri sought response from the investigating agency Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Kejriwal’s petition challenging the lower court’s order to take cognizance of the charge sheet. The hearing of this case will take place on December 20.
Kejriwal sought to set aside the trial court’s order and argued that he was a public servant at the time of the alleged offence, hence the special court took cognizance of the charge sheet against him without any sanction for trial. However, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the ED, said that sanction has been granted to prosecute Kejriwal and he will file an affidavit. The advocate appearing for Kejriwal said that he has not been given relevant documents along with the supplementary charge sheet. He claimed that approval (for this) was not taken at the time of filing the final report.
When the court initially scheduled the hearing for January next year, the former Chief Minister requested for an early date for the hearing and his lawyer urged that in view of the urgency of the case, an order on his petition seeking stay on the proceedings would be passed today itself. be passed. Mehta opposed this argument and requested to file a reply to the petition regarding stay on the application. He said that this kind of attitude is inappropriate.
He said that this is a kind of “threat” from the petitioner to take the matter to the apex court. Kejriwal’s lawyer replied that how can he (Mehta) “threaten anyone”. The court said that due to “huge pressure of cases”, early hearing is not possible. After this, the next hearing of the case was fixed for December 20. Kejriwal’s lawyer urged the High Court to exempt the leader from appearing in the lower court. The lower court is going to hear the money laundering case on December 3.
Justice Ohri remarked that such a request can be made by the petitioner in the lower court and not before him.
During the hearing, Kejriwal’s lawyer argued that the seventh supplementary charge sheet filed by the ED was a copy of the sixth supplementary charge sheet in “literally?” Is repetition. Kejriwal has been made an accused in the seventh supplementary charge sheet. He said that it (seventh supplementary chargesheet) was filed without any new material collected during the investigation and even the witnesses in both the chargesheets were the same.
Mehta objected to this argument, saying it was factually incorrect and further investigation was conducted by the ED.
Apart from demanding quashing of the trial court’s July 9 order taking cognizance of the charge sheet, Kejriwal also demanded quashing of all proceedings related to the case. The High Court had on November 12 sought response from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on its plea challenging the summons issued to Arvind Kejriwal in a money laundering case related to the alleged excise scam.
The High Court refused to stay the hearing of the lower court in the criminal case for the time being. The Supreme Court had granted interim bail to Kejriwal on July 12 in the money laundering case and the apex court had released him on bail on September 13 in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case. According to CBI and ED, irregularities were committed while revising the excise policy and undue benefits were given to license holders. The Delhi government implemented the policy on 17 November 2021 and canceled it by the end of September 2022 amid corruption allegations.