Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday told the Supreme Court that his “ille- gal arrest” in a money-laun- dering case stemming from the alleged excise policy scam constitutes an unprecedented assault on the tenets of de- mocracy based on “free and fair elections” and “federal- ism”.
In a rejoinder to the En- forcement Directorate’s (ED) reply affidavit filed on his pe- tition challenging his arrest in the case, Kejriwal said the mode, manner and timing of his arrest just before the Lok Sabha elections when the Model Code of Conduct had come into play, speaks vol- umes about the “arbitrari-
ness” of the agency. Kejriwal claimed it is a “classical case” of how the Centre has misused the ED and its wide powers under
the Prevention of Money Laundering Act to “crush” the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its leaders.
“… It is submitted that the petitioner’s ar- rest consti- tutes an un- precedented. assault on the tenets of de- mocracy based on ‘free and fair elec- tions’ and ‘fed- eralism’, both of which form significant constituents of the basic structure of the Constitution,” the rejoinder said.
It claimed that ED illegally ‘picked up’ a sitting chief min- ister and the national con- venor of one of the national Opposition parties,http://Kejri five days after the general elections were announced and the Model Code of Conduct came
