AAP convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will return to Tihar Jail on Sunday as his interim bail period ends. This comes as the Delhi Rouse Avenue Court reserved Kejriwal's bail plea for June 5.
The Delhi CM took to X to announce his decision. "On orders of the honourable Supreme Court, I came out from prison for election campaign for 21 days. Many thanks to the honourable Supreme Court," he said in a post in Hindi on 'X'. "Today I will go to Tihar and surrender. I will leave home at 3 pm. First, I will go to Raj Ghat and pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi. From there, I will go to Hanuman Temple in Connaught Place to seek blessings of Hanuman ji. And from there, I will go to the party office and meet with workers and party leaders. From there, I will leave for Tihar," the chief minister said.
"All of you take care of yourselves. I will be worried about you. If you are happy then your Kejriwal will also be happy in jail. Jai Hind," he added
Kejriwal had received a three-week interim bail for campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections and the SC bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta had asked him to surrender to Tihar jail on June 2.
On Saturday, Kejriwal attended the INDIA bloc meeting at Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge's home. He also convened a meeting of the AAP's Political Affairs Committee (PAC) at his residence. The PAC meeting discussed the party's strategy and the need to keep unity among the leaders in his absence. Cabinet minister Atishi, Rajya Sabha MPs Raghav Chadha and Sanjay Singh, and MLA Durgesh Pathak attended the meeting.
Sources told PTI that the meeting emphasised that Kejriwal will continue to remain chief minister, and his wife Sunita Kejriwal will continue to convey his messages to party leaders, volunteers and the people of Delhi.
The chief minister had earlier moved the Supreme Court seeking a seven-day extension of the interim bail granted by it in the money laundering case linked to an alleged excise policy scam. However, the SC registry on Wednesday refused an urgent listing of his plea in which he had pleaded he needed time to undergo medical tests as he was losing weight and was having high ketone levels.
He then moved the special CBI-ED court seeking interim bail on medical grounds. Senior Advocate N Hariharan, who appeared for Kejriwal submitted that the interim bail was to campaign for his party (Aam Aadmi Party) which is a national party.
"He didn’t campaign and fell ill. It was a lot of stress due to the campaigning and you know that stress is a aggrevator of diabetes. What was alarming was that ketone levels rose in the urine. The aspect of concern is the high level of sugar and the ketone numbers," Kejriwal’s advocate submitted in the plea.
However, the ED submitted that the court cannot modify the Supreme Court order. "This court cannot modify the Supreme Court order. He’s on interim bail because the SC granted it, what he is asking here is an extension of the Supreme Court order," the ED lawyers submitted.
The ED also argued that Kejriwal suppressed facts including about his health conditions. "This interim bail plea is required to be dismissed as it is full of suppression of facts. The Supreme Court had granted Liberty to him that he can file regular bail but the liberty to seek an extension of interim bail was not granted to him. He has said that these tests require 7 days, but the nature of the test has been suppressed," they further stated.
The ED also raised maintainability issues on the interim bail plea and submitted that instead of getting a medical test done, Kejriwal was travelling across. Medical tests would take more than one hour.