New Delhi:

The Supreme Court is likely to give its verdict today on interim bail to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who was arrested on March 21 by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money laundering case linked to the alleged liquor policy scam and is seeking a release from jail to campaign for the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

A bench, comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta, had reserved its verdict on interim bail to Mr Kejriwal on May 7.

Mr Kejriwal, who is also the national convenor of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), is currently lodged in Tihar jail under judicial custody.

The bench has divided the hearing on Mr Kejriwal’s petition against his arrest into two parts. While his main petition challenges his arrest by the central probe agency and seeks it to be declared as “illegal”, the second aspect pertains to the grant of interim bail keeping in mind the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

The Delhi High Court had on April 9 upheld the AAP chief’s arrest, saying there was no illegality and that the probe agency was left with “little option” after he skipped repeated summonses and refused to join the investigation related to alleged irregularities in the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy 2021-22.

Earlier on Tuesday, a Delhi court extended Mr Kejriwal’s judicial custody in the money laundering case till May 20.

ED Opposes Arvind Kejriwal’s Bail 

The ED on Thursday filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court opposing Arvind Kejriwal’s petition and said that laws are equal for all and that campaigning for the Lok Sabha polls is not a fundamental, constitutional, or even a legal right.

The probe agency said that no political leader has ever been granted bail for campaigning and said that letting Mr Kejriwal out of jail to canvas for AAP candidates would set a wrong precedent.

In its affidavit, the ED pointed out that, while hearing the bail plea of former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia — a co-accused in the same case — the court had said that the laws apply equally to all citizens and institutions, including the State.

Stating that Mr Kejriwal had sought interim bail primarily for campaigning in the Lok Sabha elections, the agency submitted, “It is relevant to note that the right to campaign is neither a fundamental right nor a constitutional right and not even a legal right.”

The agency also argued that 123 elections have taken place in the past five years and if interim bail is granted to Mr Kejriwal for campaigning, then no politician can be kept in judicial custody since polls take place around the year.

The ED repeated an argument it had made during the last hearing and said that campaigning is part of a politician’s job and, following the rule of equality, small farmers or small traders can also seek interim bail to carry out the demands of their work. It also stressed that Mr Kejriwal is not even contesting the ongoing elections.

The agency stated that granting bail to the Delhi Chief Minister would set a precedent that would permit “all unscrupulous politicians” to commit crimes and then evade investigation citing campaigning for one election or the other.

Supreme Court’s Last Hearing On Arvind Kejriwal’s Bail

In the last hearing, the Supreme Court had said it was not going by whether the petitioner is a politician or not. The focus, the bench headed by Justice Sanjiv Khanna said, was on whether there was an exceptional circumstance which necessitated interim bail.

The Supreme Court also said that Arvind Kejriwal is the elected chief minister of Delhi and is not a habitual offender.

“There are elections… these are extraordinary circumstances and he is not a habitual offender,” the bench had said.

The bench also asked the ED why it took them two years to act against the chief minister and his party.

“The issue is that it has taken two years for this. It is not good for any investigating agency to say that it takes two years to unearth… now when will the trial start,” it asked.

All seven seats in Delhi will vote in the sixth phase of the seven-phased Lok Sabha elections on May 25.

New Delhi:

Senior INDIA bloc leaders will attend a rally to be held by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi today. The “loktantra bachao” (save democracy) rally is being held days after Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money-laundering case.

The administration has allowed 20,000 people to come for the rally, but Delhi Police expects it to exceed 30,000. The AAP said the gathering may reach up to one lakh, which is the full capacity of Ramlila Maidan.

AAP’s ‘Loktantra Bachao’ Rally

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge and former party president Rahul Gandhi will attend the “loktantra bachao” rally. Former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi may also participate in the rally.

Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Tejashwi Yadav, Nationalist Congress Party – Sharadchandra Pawar president Sharad Pawar, and Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray will also attend the mega rally.

Other prominent political leaders and members of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) like Trinamool Congress’ Derek O’Brien, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, Jharkhand Chief Minister Champai Soren of JMM, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, CPI general secretary D Raja, and DMK’s Tiruchi Siva will also attend the rally.

From Punjab, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, cabinet ministers, and AAP MLAs will also participate in the rally.

Kalpana Soren, the wife of former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, who is currently in jail, will also attend the rally. Ms Soren on Saturday met Mr Kejriwal’s wife Sunita Kejriwal at Delhi Chief Minister’s residence on 6 Flagstaff Road.

Traffic Advisory

According to the Delhi Police’s traffic advisory, movement will be regulated and may be restricted on the Ranjeet Singh Flyover from Barakhamba Road to Guru Nanak Chowk, Vivekanand Marg from Minto Road to roundabout Kamla Market, Hamdard Chowk, JLN Marg from Delhi Gate to Guru Nanak Chowk and Ajmeri Gate, roundabout Kamla Market to Guru Nanak Chowk and Chaman Lal Marg near VIP Gate, Guru Nanak Chowk to Turkman Gate from 9 am to 3 pm.

Traffic diversion may also be imposed on Rajghat Chowk, Minto Road, DDU Marg, Mirdard Chowk, Paharganj Chowk, A-Point, and Delhi Gate from 9 am onwards.

Traffic Advisory

In view of a political rally at Ramlila Maidan on March 31, 2024, traffic will be affected.

Kindly follow the traffic advisory. #DPTrafficAdvisorypic.twitter.com/UBozpP2wVA

— Delhi Traffic Police (@dtptraffic) March 30, 2024

People going towards ISBT, railway station or airport have been advised to plan their travel with sufficient time at hand.

New Delhi:

Punjab Minister Harjot Singh Bains and Somnath Bharti were among the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) members who were detained by the Delhi police today as they protested against the arrest of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the liquor policy case.

Several AAP leaders and workers – including women – were seen being shoved and dragged into the buses in which they were taken to various police stations in the national capital.

While the Aam Aadmi Party had called a ‘gherao’ of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence today, the BJP is taking out a mega march demanding Mr Kejriwal’s resignation, calling his ‘work from jail’ plan a sham.

The Delhi Police has increased security along the roads leading to the Prime Minister’s residence. Due to security reasons, some Metro stations are also shut today, officials said.

Police said the AAP members did not the permission to protest.

“There is no permission to hold protest. We also got information that protesters will gather at the Patel Chowk metro station. In view of that, we stepped up security arrangements,” said Devesh Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police, New Delhi.

The BJP has been demanding that Arvind Kejriwal step down as the chief minister after his arrest. However, the AAP insists that Mr Kejriwal will remain the chief minister of Delhi, even if that meant functioning from inside the jail.

A protest was organised by the Aam Aadmi Party on Sunday as well – in which the representatives of INDIA bloc also took part. At a joint press meet, Delhi minister Gopal Rai said there is anger among the people over the manner in which Mr Kejriwal was arrested.

The INDIA Opposition bloc ha announced a mega rally at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on Sunday to protest against Mr Kejriwal’s arrest.

The Aam Aadmi Party chief was arrested on Thursday and, the next day, the Rouse Avenue court in Delhi had remanded him in the Probe Agency’s custody till March 28.

New Delhi:
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has today called for a ‘gherao’ of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence to protest against the arrest of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The BJP has also planned a counter-protest demanding Mr Kejriwal’s resignation.

Here are the top 10 updates on this big story:

New Delhi:

Battlelines are drawn after the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal by the Enforcement Directorate in the alleged liquor policy scam, with his Aam Aadmi Party calling nationwide protests outside the BJP offices.

The Supreme Court is likely to take up today Mr Kejriwal’s petition against his arrest, a day after it denied an urgent hearing in his plea against the raids. The probe agency, meanwhile, will produce the Chief Minister in an ED court.

Mr Kejriwal’s arrest, just weeks ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, has unleashed waves of protest by thousands of party workers and condemnation from the Opposition camp. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will also visit Mr Kejriwal’s family today, said sources,

Read | Explained: Why Enforcement Directorate Arrested Arvind Kejriwal

The AAP has said that Mr Kejriwal will continue to discharge his chief ministerial duties from jail – a prospect that may create a constitutional crisis, legal experts have said.

The Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering angle in the alleged liquor policy scam, had called Mr Kejriwal a “conspirator”.

The probe team turned up at Mr Kejriwal’s home last evening with a search warrant after he skipped nine summonses by the central agency. Later in the day, the Delhi High Court refused to grant him protection from arrest.

Read | AAP Says Arvind Kejriwal Will Remain Chief Minister. How Feasible Is That?

The agency arrested him around 9 pm after a search and questioning session and took him to the ED office. His and his wife’s phones were also confiscated and data was transferred from two tablets and a laptop at his home. Mr Kejriwal spent the night in an ED lock-up after a medical check-up from the RML hospital, sources said.

Delhi minister Atishi has called the arrest a “conspiracy by the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi” and said Mr Kejriwal will remain the Delhi Chief Minister. “We have said from the beginning that he will run the government from jail if need be. He has not been convicted… No law stops him from doing so,” she said in Hindi.

At a post-midnight press conference, AAP called a nationwide protest against the BJP on Friday. In Delhi, the protest will take place outside the BJP headquarters.

Mr Kejriwal’s arrest comes less than a week after BRS leader K Kavitha was taken into custody in the liquor policy case. Mr Kejriwal was named as a conspirator for the first time after Ms Kavitha’s arrest.

New Delhi:

Three top Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders including Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal have been arrested in the Delhi liquor policy case.

K Kavitha, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader and daughter of former Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, is also in jail.

The other two are AAP MP Sanjay Singh and former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia.

The ED’s case is that the Delhi liquor policy 2021-22 provided an exceptionally high profit margin of 12 per cent for wholesalers and nearly 185 per cent for retailers. Of the 12 per cent, 6 per cent was to be recovered from wholesalers as kickbacks for AAP leaders, and the “South Group” allegedly gave Rs 100 crore in advance to another accused, Vijay Nair, who was linked to the AAP.

A key focus of the investigation into the Delhi liquor policy case was on an alleged network of middlemen, businessmen and politicians which the central agencies have called the “South Group”.

The ED alleged the liquor policy was tweaked to help companies of the “South Group” and Mr Sisodia diluted the policy in their favour without any consultation.

So far, 16 key people linked to alleged money laundering while framing the now-scrapped Delhi liquor policy case have been identified. Some of the accused have become witnesses.

New Delhi:

The decade-long rivalry between the AAP led by Arvind Kejriwal and the BJP ruling at the Centre reached a crescendo on Thursday with the arrest of the Delhi chief minister by the ED in an excise policy-linked money laundering case.

The tussle between the two sides began with their almost simultaneous rise to power with the BJP led by Narendra Modi receiving a massive mandate in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the AAP forming the government in Delhi with a historic victory a year later by winning 67 assembly seats out of 70.

Even before this, Mr Kejriwal, after a brief stint as chief minister of Delhi in 2013, challenged Prime Minister Modi in a much-publicised contest from Varanasi in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, setting the stage for a rivalry that has continued over the years.

Speaking in the Delhi Assembly in February this year, Mr Kejriwal, who is also the AAP national convener, asserted that the AAP is “the biggest threat” to the BJP and vowed to liberate the country from it in the 2029 Lok Sabha polls.

The confrontations between the Kejriwal government and the Centre over governance-related matters assumed political overtones and blame-game with both the AAP and the BJP joining their respective sides.

The Aam Aadmi Party dispensation since coming to power in Delhi in 2015 has been involved in frequent run-ins with the office of lieutenant governor.

It began with the Kejriwal government confronting the then Lt Governor Najeeb Jung over the issues of control over the Anti Corruption Branch, transfer and posting of senior officers, and movement of official files, just after coming to power.

The AAP vociferously attacked Mr Jung, who formed a three-member committee headed by former Comptroller and Auditor General of India V K Shunglu to look into 400 files of the Delhi government.

Another controversy erupted when Mr Jung appointed an IAS officer chief secretary who was asked by Mr Kejriwal not to take charge and even locked his office over the matter.

The tussle between the AAP dispensation and the LG office continued even after Mr Jung resigned in December 2016 and former Union home secretary Anil Baijal replaced him.

Mr Baijal’s more than five-year tenure as Delhi LG witnessed numerous face-offs, the most remarkable being Chief Minister Kejriwal accompanied by his cabinet colleagues staging a dharna inside Raj Niwas in 2018, alleging that city bureaucrats were not listening to the ministers.

The AAP dispensation also clashed with Mr Baijal over the appointment of special public prosecutors for a trial of cases related to the Delhi riots in 2020 and anti-CAA protests.

In July 2021, the then deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia objected to Mr Baijal holding meetings with officers and instructing them on works that directly came under the purview of the elected government.

A more bitter face-off ensued after incumbent Lt Governor V K Saxena took charge in May 2022.

Within two months, Saxena recommended a CBI probe into alleged irregularities and procedural lapses in the formulation and execution of the Kejriwal government’s excise policy 2021-22.

This opened up an altogether new chapter of fraught relations between the AAP dispensation and the other side, with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arresting Sisodia and party MP Sanjay Singh in connection with the alleged liquor scam.

After the ED’s summonses to Mr Kejriwal in connection with the excise policy-linked money laundering case and also in a separate case related to the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), the AAP has sharpened its attack on the BJP and its government at the Centre.

The AAP leadership has accused the BJP of trying to break the party by sending the Delhi chief minister behind bars and toppling his government in Delhi.

The BJP, on the other hand, is having a field day slamming AAP and Kejriwal over alleged corruption in the Delhi government.

The Delhi LG empowered by the implementation of the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Act in August 2023, has assumed a more proactive role in governance-related matters evoking strong protests by the Kejriwal government and AAP.

The power tussle between the Kejriwal government and the Centre has its genesis in a notification issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs in May 2015, stipulating Delhi LG will have jurisdiction in services, public order, police and land matters.

The notification paved the way for a long legal battle between the two sides in the Delhi High Court as well as the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on May 11, 2023, ruled in favour of the Delhi government extending its executive powers over the services matters involving transfer and posting of senior officers.

Within days of the SC verdict, the BJP-led Centre brought an ordinance that was later on turned into an Act restoring the power balance in favour of its representative LG. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

With the Enforcement Directorate taking him into custody on Thursday, Arvind Kejriwal has become the first serving Chief Minister to be arrested. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief is the third senior leader from the party to be arrested in connection with the Delhi liquor policy scam, leaving question marks about the future of his party, which has insisted that he will continue to run the government from behind bars.

Mr Kejriwal was taken into custody hours after the Delhi High Court refused to grant him protection from arrest in the liquor policy case. He has skipped nine summons issued by the ED, the last of which required his presence for questioning on Thursday.

When the same agency had arrested then Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren in connection with the money laundering case linked to an alleged Rs 600-crore land scam on January 31, the JMM leader had refused to sign the arrest memo until he tendered his resignation to the Governor.

When he was being taken away after being questioned for over six hours at his residence in Ranchi, Mr Soren had insisted on stopping at the Raj Bhavan, where he handed his resignation to Governor CP Radhakrishnan. This ensured that he was a former chief minister, even if by a whisker, before his actual arrest.

Some of the other former chief ministers in the country who have been spent time behind bars include RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, late J Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK, Chandrababu Naidu of the TDP and Om Prakash Chautala of the Indian National Lok Dal.

New Delhi:

Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, in a sharply-worded message, called Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest this evening by the Enforcement Directorate “completely wrong and unconstitutional”. The Delhi Chief Minister was taken into custody in a money laundering case linked to the alleged Delhi excise scam.

Ms Vadra is the first INDIA bloc leader to slam the arrest.

“Targeting Delhi Chief Minister Shri Arvind Kejriwal in this manner due to elections is completely wrong and unconstitutional. Lowering the level of politics in this manner suits neither the Prime Minister nor his government,” she wrote on X, minutes after the arrest.

“Fight your critics in the electoral battle, confront them boldly, and of course attack their policies and working style – this is democracy. But in this way, using the power of all the institutions of the country to fulfill one’s political objective and weakening them by exerting pressure is against every principle of democracy,” she added.

The Congress leader listed the ways the Opposition in the country is being targetted and attacked by the BJP ahead of the crucial Lok Sabha polls.

“The bank accounts of the country’s largest opposition party Congress have been frozen, all the political parties and their leaders are under pressure day and night from the ED, the CBI, and the IT, one Chief Minister has been put in jail, now preparations are being made to take another Chief Minister to jail. Such a shameful scene is being seen for the first time in the history of Independent India,” she added.

Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal has become the first sitting Chief Minister to be arrested in the history of Independent India. His party maintained he will continue to hold the post.

The arrest has dealt a severe blow to the Opposition’s mega alliance INDIA, of which the AAP is a member.