Excise case: Kejriwal invokes Satyagraha, refuses to appear before Delhi HC judge

AAP chief cites loss of faith in Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, says he will not appear in person or through a lawyer in the Delhi excise case.

New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal has written a strongly worded letter to Delhi High Court Judge Swarana Kanta Sharma, declaring he will neither appear personally nor through counsel before her in the Delhi excise policy case, citing a broken faith in the impartiality of the proceedings.

“My hope of getting justice from Justice Swarana Kanta has been broken. Therefore, I have decided to follow Mahatma Gandhi’s path of Satyagraha,” Kejriwal wrote in the letter on Monday, April 27.

The move comes days after Justice Sharma dismissed Kejriwal’s recusal application on April 20, which had sought her withdrawal from the case on grounds of alleged conflict of interest and political bias.

The recusal that was refused

In his letter, Kejriwal outlined two central concerns that had driven his original recusal application, which he says remain unaddressed.

The first relates to Justice Sharma’s alleged repeated public association with the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad (ABAP), which Kejriwal describes as “the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) legal front” and part of “the ideological ecosystem of the ruling dispensation.” The former chief minister of Delhi noted that former Supreme Court judge Justice Abhay S Oka had publicly stated that he would have declined invitations from the ABAP while serving as a sitting judge, given the organisation’s political inclinations, which lends some credence, Kejriwal argued.

The second and more serious concern involves a direct conflict of interest – both of Justice Sharma’s children are empanelled on the Union Government’s legal panels, and their brief allocations are controlled by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, the very law officer appearing on the opposite side in his case, Kejriwal said.

Citing Right to Information (RTI) data, Kejriwal said that Justice Sharma’s son was marked an “extraordinarily high” 5,904 dockets between 2023 and 2025, placing him among the top 10 recipients out of roughly 700 panel counsels combined across the Supreme Court. “Each docket represents an appearance fee of Rs. 9,000/- per day per docket. This is a substantial amount of money running into crores of rupees,” he wrote.

Kejriwal also flagged the timeline of empanelments. Justice Sharma was elevated to the Delhi High Court in March 2022, with her son being empanelled as Union’s Group A counsel for the Supreme Court just five months later. By late 2025, both children held multiple panel positions before the High Court and the Supreme Court.

Judgment that deepened distrust

Kejriwal reserved particular criticism for the language of the April 20 order rejecting his recusal plea, saying it had itself become “an additional and independent reason” for his loss of confidence. He wrote that the judgment spoke of “accusations hurled at me,” of a litigant trying to prove “the Judge herself is tainted,” and of avoiding signals that the court could be “intimidated by a political litigant.”

“Those are not, with respect, answers to the case I had brought,” he wrote. “They show me that my plea of apprehension has been judicially understood as a personal and institutional affront. And once that has happened, how do I expect that I would be heard on a wholly clean slate.”

Gandhian stand

Framing his decision explicitly in the language of Satyagraha, Kejriwal wrote that Gandhi’s principle required a citizen sensing injustice to first place it before the competent authority, examine his own motives, and only then, if the injustice remained unaddressed, offer quiet, non-violent resistance and accept the consequences.

“I am fully conscious that by doing so, I may prejudice my own legal interests,” he said. “I understand that I may lose the opportunity to advance submissions before this Hon’ble Court and that adverse consequences in law may follow. I am prepared to bear those consequences.”

“My present inability is confined to this matter and to such future proceedings in which these very apprehensions arise with equal force… I shall continue to appear in matters where the Solicitor-General does not appear and matters unconnected with the Union Government, the BJP, or the RSS.”

What comes next

Kejriwal has reserved the right to challenge the recusal dismissal and the revision petition’s orders before the Supreme Court. He requested the letter be taken on record, and closed with an affirmation that his objection was not to the judiciary as an institution.

“My faith in the Constitution of India remains unwavering. My respect for the judiciary remains intact,” he wrote. “My objection is not to the institution of the High Court or the larger judicial system, but only to the continuance of this matter before Your Ladyship under a cloud of grave and unresolved questions.”