India: Kejriwal to remain Delhi CM
The top court dismissed a plea on seeking the removal of Kejriwal as the CM of Delhi
Last week, the apex court granted interim bail to Kejriwal in view of the upcoming Lok Sabha election in Delhi on June 1
The Supreme Court dismissed a plea on Monday seeking the removal of Arvind Kejriwal as the Chief Minister of Delhi because of his arrest by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) in connection with the Delhi excise policylinked money laundering case.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta said it cannot go into such issues and it is up to the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi to look into it.
The bench said: “How should we go into all this? Let the LG take action if he wants to... there is no legal right.”
Last week, the bench granted interim bail to Kejriwal in view of the upcoming Lok Sabha election in Delhi on June 1. The bench, however, said that Kejriwal cannot discharge the functions of the chief minister, sign any official files, or use the Chief Minister’s Office.
Earlier, the Delhi High Court dismissed pleas seeking directions to remove Kejriwal as the chief minister of Delhi following
his arrest by the central agency. Petitioner before it was attempting to drag the court into a political thicket, the Delhi HC had said.
The Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) national convener and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal re
ceived a big relief from the Supreme Court, which on Friday granted him interim bail till June 1 in the alleged money laundering case linked to Delhi’s excise policy.
He spent over 50 days in Tihar Jail after being arrested by
the ED in connection with the case on March 21, days after the election schedule for the general elections was announced.
The bail is applicable till June 1, and Kejriwal must surrender to authorities on June 2. The Delhi CM can participate in poll cam
paigning but cannot attend his office as the chief minister.
The Lok Sabha elections in Delhi’s seven parliamentary constituencies will be held in a single phase on May 25. The counting of votes will take place on June 4.
Kejriwal, on Sunday, launched a strong attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and said he was sent to jail because he built schools for children in Delhi, facilitated proper medical care for people and provided uninterrupted and free electricity to all the residents in the national capital.
“I was thinking why did he (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) send me to jail? What is my fault? My fault is that I built schools. When your children were not getting properly educated, I facilitated good schools for your children. This is my fault. When anyone from your family got sick, you used to spend lakhs in private hospitals. I facilitated proper medical care for you. This is my fault,” Kejriwal said while holding a roadshow at Delhi’s Moti Nagar area along with Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.
The AAP chief also claimed that the jail authorities did not even provide him with medication for his treatment of diabetes for 15 days.