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In Kejriwal's 4-page letter to Justice Sharma who didn't get off his case, an ex-judge's remark on RSS-linked event
AAP chief said that he had raised several concerns to Justice Sharma, including the issue of her “repeated public association with the RSS’s legal front.
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.
In the four-page letter posted on X, 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.
What did Justice Abhay S Oka say?
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.
It should be noted that these remarks were made while justice Oka was speaking at an ABAP event, though no longer a sitting judge.
“If, as a sitting judge, I was invited by Adhivakta Parishad to speak on their platform, I would have politely said no because Adhivakta Parishad does have political inclinations,” he said.
The retired judge was speaking at the event hosted by the Supreme Court unit of the RSS-affiliated body on the topic, ‘Robes cannot be rented’.
What Justice Sharma had said on attending RSS-linked 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.
“The events were not political. Speakers were invited to speak on legal issues. In the past, many judges in this country have participated in them. Merely because I was invited to deliver a lecture, cannot be a basis to insinuate political bias,” she said.
"Judges are invited as judges of the court. In interaction, there is no space for any political ideology. The relationship between bar and bench is not confined only to courtrooms. It is not uncommon for bar associations to organise functions. No litigant can be allowed to reckon the relationship between bar and bench,” she added.
