Former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has written to Delhi High Court Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, who has refused to recuse from his case, and said he will not appear in the excise policy case personally or through a lawyer before her.
In the letter, he has also cited remarks by a retired Supreme Court justice on attending events of an RSS-affiliated lawyers' body.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief said that he had raised several concerns in his recusal application to Justice Sharma, including the issue of her "repeated public association with the RSS's legal front, the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad (ABAP)", which he called an organisation "belonging to the ideological ecosystem of the ruling dispensation".
"Ideologically, myself and my party are strongly opposed to RSS ideology. When Your Ladyship has been frequently attending their programmes, how can I hope to get justice from this Hon'ble Court?" Kejriwal asked.
He also cited recent remarks by former Supreme Court judge Justice Abhay S. Oka, who said he would have declined any such invitation if it had come his way while on the bench.
"I may also respectfully note that the concern I had expressed is not wholly alien to judicial ethos. Former Hon'ble Mr Justice Abhay S. Oka recently stated publicly that, had he been invited by Adhivakta Parishad while serving as a sitting judge, he would have politely declined because, in his understanding, the organisation had political inclinations," Kejriwal wrote.
Retired Supreme Court judge Abhay S Oka said at an event in New Delhi recently that if he had been invited by the RSS-linked ABAP "as a sitting judge", he would not have attended their events.
Justice Swarna Kanta Sharma stated, while declining Arvind Kejriwal's plea for her to recuse, that attending ABAP events does not imply political bias.
