The Delhi high court on Monday pulled up Sandeep Kumar, a former legislator from the Sultanpur Mazraconstituency in the Capital who filed a plea seeking to dislodge chief minister Arvind Kejriwal from holding his post, with the court saying that the petition was filed “for publicity”, and deserved to be saddled with heavy costs.
Kumar, who was an MLA from the Aam Aadmi Party from February 2015 to August 2016, and was a minister in the then Delhi government before he was expelled from the party, filed a writ petition seeking Kejriwal’s removal as chief minister following his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on March 21 in connection with alleged irregularities in the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy 2021-22.
Read here: Delhi high court slams ex-AAP MLA on plea to remove Arvind Kejriwal as CM: ‘Heavy costs…’
Kejriwal, who is currently lodged in Tihar jail, has repeatedly stated that he will continue as chief minister.
Hearing Kumar’s plea on Monday, the high court said that the petition was filed “just for publicity”.
“Is this a PIL? How is it a writ of quo warranto? You might escape without costs. I would have imposed heavy costs. This is just for publicity,” a bench of justice Subramonium Prasad said to the lawyer who appeared for the former legislator.
The bench, however, transferred Kumar’s plea to a bench led by acting chief justice Manmohan after taking note of the fact that the other bench had earlier heard and rejected two similar pleas.
“Since similar matters are listed and disposed of by hon’ble acting chief justice, let this matter be listed before the hon’ble acting chief justice,” the court said in its order, while posting Kumar’s plea for April 10.
A bench led by acting chief justice Manmohan had earlier this month dismissed two pleas — one each by social activist Surjit Singh Yadav and Hindu Sena president Vishnu Gupta — seeking Kejriwal’s removal as chief minister, with the court stating that it would not “enter into this thicket” when the issue was being examined by lieutenant governor (LG) VK Saxena.
While rejecting Gupta’s plea, the bench had remarked that it was not the job of courts to remove a chief minister, and that it should not anticipate the actions of the LG or the President of India, who had discretion in such matters. The same bench, while junking Yadav’s plea, had observed that the President would act on it if any constitutional failure would exist due to the arrest of a sitting chief minister.
