India's Supreme Court granted Delhi state chief and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal bail on Friday, only days before the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta said that the interim bail has been granted for 22 days. Kejriwal will have to surrender on June 2.
The court further said that other bail conditions would be similar to those imposed on AAP parliamentarian Sanjay Singh. Notably, Singh was also given bail by the Supreme Court after he was arrested in October last year in the same case. The AAP parliamentarian got bail after six months in jail.
Earlier on Thursday, the ED filed an affidavit in the top court opposing Kejriwal’s bail petition. The ED argued that laws are equal for all and that campaigning for the Lok Sabha polls is not a fundamental, constitutional, or even legal right.
Meanwhile, the AAP raised strong objection to the ED’s affidavit and filed a formal complaint with the top court’s registry.
However, while hearing the bail petition of Kejriwal on Tuesday, the apex court said that “there are elections, these are extraordinary circumstances and he is not a habitual offender."
Prior to that, the Supreme Court had said that it would consider giving bail to Kejriwal not because of his political profession but purely on possible exceptional circumstances that warrant the temporary release of the AAP chief.