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Excerpt from www.thehindubusinessline.com
The Directorate of Enforcement filed a sharply-worded affidavit in the Supreme Court on Thursday against the possibility of granting interim bail to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the liquor policy case, saying 123 elections happened in the last five years alone and if politicians are given bail for campaigning, none of them can be even arrested as elections in India are an “all-year-round-phenomenon”.
The filing of the affidavit coincided with an announcement made in open court by Justice Sanjiv Khanna, who headed the two-judge Bench which heard the Kejriwal case, that the court would pronounce its order on the question of interim bail to the Chief Minister on May 10.
Grant of interim bail to Kejriwal to campaign for Lok Sabha elections would be anathema to the rule of law, equality and create a precedent which would permit “all unscrupulous politicians to commit crimes, avoid investigation under the garb of one election or the other, be it municipal election or panchayat elections or assembly or general elections, and thereafter, upon being arrested, seek interim bail to campaign for one election or the other”. In a federal structure, one election was as good as another.