Big blow to Arvind Kejriwal from Delhi High Court, the court rejected the demand for removal of Judge Swarn Kanta Sharma.

New Delhi: Delhi High Court has given a big blow to Arvind Kejriwal. The court completely rejected his demand to remove Judge Swarn Kanta Sharma in the liquor policy scam case or transfer the case to another bench. The Chief Justice clearly said that there is no basis for doing so.

Kejriwal accused the judge of bias

Aam Aadmi Party’s national convenor and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had written a letter to Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyay on March 11. He said that the hearing in the bench of Justice Swarn Kanta Sharma will not be fair. Kejriwal expressed apprehension that the court’s stance seemed biased.

He cited the March 9 order, in which the trial court’s decision was stayed without hearing the accused. He said that in normal cases the parties get 4-5 weeks to file their replies, but here there was a hurry. This made him fear prejudice.

Chief Justice’s response

While giving the verdict on Kejriwal’s petition, the Chief Justice of Delhi High Court said that the case has been assigned to Justice Sharma as per the roster. At the administrative level, no concrete reason was found to transfer it to another bench.

He clarified that if Justice Sharma himself wants to recuse himself from this matter, then it will be his own decision. The court also referred to the Registrar General’s letter dated March 13, in which it was said that the transfer demand was rejected. Due to rejection of Kejriwal’s demand, this matter will now proceed in Justice Sharma’s bench only.

Delhi excise case

This entire controversy is related to Delhi’s Excise Policy 2021-22. On February 27, the trial court had acquitted 22 accused including Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia of charges. The court had termed the CBI investigation as baseless. CBI challenged this in the High Court, which is going on in the bench of Justice Swarn Kanta Sharma.

On March 9, Justice Sharma issued a notice and stayed some orders of the trial court. He termed the observations of the trial court as wrong and also stopped the direction for departmental action against the CBI officer. Also ordered to postpone the hearing of the ED case related to money laundering.