Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal has written a formal letter to Delhi High Court Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, declaring that he will no longer participate in the excise case proceedings before her bench. The former Chief Minister stated he would not appear personally or through legal counsel, signaling a rare and direct confrontation with the judiciary, PTI reported on Monday.
In the letter, Kejriwal wrote: “My hope of getting justice from Justice Swarana Kanta has been broken. Therefore, I have decided to follow Mahatma Gandhi’s path of Satyagraha.” He noted that the decision was a matter of "conscience" and reserved the right to challenge the High Court’s recent rulings in the Supreme Court.
The development follows the High Court's April 20 decision to reject Kejriwal’s plea for Justice Sharma’s recusal. Kejriwal had raised sensitive allegations regarding a "reasonable apprehension of bias," primarily focusing on the professional empanelment of the judge’s children as Central government counsel under the Solicitor General. According to a report by LiveLaw, Kejriwal cited RTI data claiming the judge's son was assigned a significant volume of cases between 2023 and 2025, arguing that such assignments from the prosecuting authority (the Central Government) created a conflict of interest. He also pointed to the judge's participation in events hosted by the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad (ABAP), an organization he described as ideologically opposed to the AAP.
Dismissing these claims, Justice Sharma termed the application an attempt to "judge a judge" based on "aspersions and insinuations" rather than evidence. In a strongly worded order, she stated that recusing under such pressure would be an "act of surrender" that would allow powerful litigants to "shake or bend" the institution through systematic attacks. She clarified that the professional independence of a judge's children cannot be used to bar a judge from performing their duties.
The legal battle originates from a February 27, 2026, ruling where a trial court discharged Kejriwal and 22 others, finding the CBI’s evidence insufficient for trial. The CBI immediately challenged this in the High Court. Friction between the two judicial levels surfaced during the first appellate hearing on March 9, when Justice Sharma stayed the trial court's direction for a departmental probe into the CBI's investigating officer, labeling the lower court's scathing remarks as “prima facie misconceived.”