On Thursday, May 9, Enforcement Directorate filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court opposing interim bail for Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal. Supreme Court is set to hear the bail plea of Kejriwal on Wednesday, May 10. The Delhi CM is in custody since March 21, after he was arrested in the Delhi Excise Policy Scam.
A day ahead of the bail hearing, ED filed the fresh affidavit in which it emphasised that no political leader has ever been granted interim bail for campaigning even if he is not contesting polls. “The right to campaign for an election is not a fundamental, constitutional or legal right. To ED’s knowledge, no political leader has been granted interim bail for campaigning even though he is not the contesting candidate,” the affidavit read.
Notably, Arvind Kejriwal is trying to use campaigning for the elections as the reason to get interim bail from the Supreme Court. Earlier, the Delhi CM had used same excuse to dodge ED summons when he skipped the summons in the name of campaigning for assembly elections in 5 states late last year.
Saying that granting bail to Arvind Kejriwal will be discriminatory in nature, ED said that no politician could be arrested and kept in judicial custody if they are granted interim bail for poll campaigning.
The ED mentioned in the affidavit, “Around 123 elections have taken place in the past three years and if interim bail is granted for election campaigning then no politician can be arrested and kept in judicial custody since elections take place all year round.”
It also said that Arvind Kejriwal or any other politician cannot cannot claim a special status higher than that of an ordinary citizen in the name of election campaigning as it would be discriminatory.