Former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday shared a video message with reasons for his refusal for appear before Delhi High Court Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma in the excise policy case. In one of the reasons, Kejriwal yet again brought up the issue of the judge’s children and their association with advocates’ panels of the central government.
The AAP chief also detailed a “sequence of events” and alleged conflict of interest for the judge who earlier this month refused to recuse from the case upon Kejriwal’s plea.
On Monday, in his four-page letter to the Delhi judge on the same subject, Kejriwal wrote: “Your Ladyship was elevated to the High Court of Delhi in March 2022. A little over five months later, in September 2022, your son was empanelled as the Union’s Group A counsel for the Supreme Court.”
He went on to detail how both her children received multiple government legal appointments in the High Court, and how her daughter was thereafter “empanelled as Group C panel counsel for the Supreme Court”, adding: “Taken together, these are, at the very least, troubling”.
Justice Sharma had refused to recuse from the case despite Kejriwal’s in-person and virtual appearances in court over the past week.
‘Children assigned cases by Solicitor General’
Kejriwal on Monday also argued that the CBI was the opposite party in the excise policy case and is represented by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who assigns cases to Justice Sharma’s children.
“Mr Tushar Mehta decides how many and which cases should be assigned to Your Ladyship’s children. If more cases are assigned to them, they get more fees”.
Kejriwal alleged that her son was marked an “extraordinarily high” number of dockets, 5,904, between 2023 and 2025.
“That places him among the top ten counsels receiving the highest number of such allocations out of a pool of roughly 700 combined panel counsels for Supreme Court, while several others received only a handful of matters, and in some instances as little as a single case in an entire year,” Kejriwal wrote in the letter.
Kejriwal said that each docket represented an appearance fee of ₹9,000 per day per docket, which ran “into crores of rupees”.
The judge’s son and daughter have not responded to the assertions.
What Justice Sharma said on Kejriwal’s arguments
This is not the first time Kejriwal has claimed a conflict of interest citing Justice Sharma’s children working as government panel lawyers.
In an affidavit filed with his plea foir her recusal, Kejriwal raised the same “apprehension of bias”.
In response, Justice Sharma had contended that Kejriwal’s reasoning about her children would effectively disqualify many judges across the country from hearing cases involving governments or political figures.
“Even if relatives of this court are on govt panel, it is important for the litigant to show the impact on the present case,” Justice Sharma had noted.
Arvind Kejriwal has now refused to appear before Justice Sharma in the excise case, personally or through a lawyer.
He has reportedly also said he is preparing to go to the Supreme Court against the earlier order given by Justice Sharma in the matter.
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