“Today is our Eid and our Diwali as well” – an AAP worker says, amid joyous celebrations outside the party headquarters in Delhi, minutes after the Supreme Court granted Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal interim bail in connection with a money laundering case linked to the now-scrapped Delhi liquor policy. The AAP chief was arrested on March 21, sending shockwaves across the capital ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
The top court had earlier deferred Kejriwal’s bail plea on May 7, continuing the speculation over his release. Although Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and Additional Solicitor General S V Raju, appearing for the Enforcement Directorate, opposed the granting of interim bail to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief on grounds of poll campaigning, a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta noted that granting Kejriwal interim bail for 21 days will not make much of a difference. “He (Kejriwal) was out there for one-and-a-half-years. He could have been arrested earlier or after but nothing such thing happened," the bench told ED.
Outside AAP’s headquarters in Delhi, party workers and supporters have turned up with posters and laddus. One poster said: ‘Hindus and Muslims do not have any fight here’. The man holding the poster says, “The BJP has no plans for education, health, or employment. They are only talking about Hindu-Muslims.” Referring to the speeches made by the ruling party amidst the ongoing elections, he says, “Is the election commission sitting with its eyes closed? Is it not seeing how a particular community is being targeted in speeches?” He supports the Kejriwal-led party because it doesn’t “target anyone’s religion” and instead “focuses on health and education”.
Although the top court has asked Kejriwal to surrender on June 2, AAP leaders hail the judgment as a “triumph of the truth”. "It was BJP's strategic mistake to arrest Kejriwal soon after elections season began," Delhi Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj says. As Kejriwal walked into jail, BJP's electoral campaign started going on a downward spiral, the minister said. "The party knew that if a man (Kejriwal) being in jail can cause them so much damage, then how much more damage could it cause the party once he is outside of jail?"
Seven constituencies of Delhi will be voting in the sixth phase on May 25, while in Punjab, another AAP-ruled state, polling is scheduled on June 1, the seventh phase.
While political discussions were going on about his possible bail, Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena recommended an NIA investigation against him saying that he had taken money from the banned organisation Sikh For Justice (SFJ). Nevertheless, AAP leaders including Saurabh Bharadwaj scrapped such charges and said that the governor is working on behalf of the ruling party.
As Kejriwal walked out of jail today, it is yet to be seen whether his interim bail will affect the INDIA bloc ahead of polling in Delhi which is scheduled for May 25? A deep look into what changed since its arrests may offer a nuanced understanding.
Since the arrest of Arvind Kejriwal on March 21, the politics of the capital has changed drastically. Firstly, his arrest worked as a glue to bring the opposition leaders together at a time when seat-sharing discussions were still going on. The big rallies of INDIA bloc members both in Delhi and Ranchi symbolically left two chairs vacant – one for Kejriwal and the other for former Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren. Both Sunita Kejriwal and Kalpana Soren, however, emerged as possible future faces for the party. Against this backdrop, the BJP again jumped on its nepotism bandwagon and criticised both parties for being allegedly family fiefdoms.
Secondly, the case of Kejriwal was different than Soren. Ahead of being arrested by ED for his alleged involvement in a land scam, Soren declared his successor. But Kejriwal wanted to continue as the CM from the prison leading to the speculation that LG Saxena could either dismiss the government or impose Presidential rule. Though the Governor didn’t take any such step, he questioned the feasibility of running the city-state from the prison several times. This matter then came up in the Supreme Court during the hearing of his interim bail and the bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna categorically said that he would not be able to perform his official duties as CM if the apex court permitted him to campaign.
Thirdly, Kejriwal’s arrest gave the AAP certain ground to re-boost and consolidate their cadres who in the last few years had somehow lost track due to consecutive arrests of their top leaders like Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh and Satyendra Jain. Recently, though Singh got bail after six months and kickstarted a vocal campaign against what they call the ‘dictatorship’ of the Modi government, Sunita Kejriwal took the centre stage.
Fourthly, though Kejriwal’s arrest seemed to diminish the tension between the AAP and Congress – two alliance partners in Delhi but rivals in Punjab – the recent events have affected the morale of the ground-level cadres. President of Delhi Congress Arvinder Singh Lovely left the party only to join BJP two days later as the party’s alliance with AAP again shattered the boat. Although Congress leaders and corporators of MCD say they would follow the instructions of the party's high command, there is resentment as well. One of the leaders anonymously said, “One cannot forget that this is the same person (Kejriwal) who wanted to finish Congress.”
In this context, Kejriwal’s bail, analysts say, can work as a ground for furthering the Opposition unity and can have an impact in both, Delhi and Punjab. Analysts add that it could also give some moral upper hand to AAP in the election season.
