Why Manish Sisodia's bail is just the morale booster crisis-embroiled AAP needs

After a nearly 17-month-long incarceration at Delhi’s Tihar Jail, AAP leader and former Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia was on Friday (August 9) granted bail by the Supreme Court in the Delhi excise policy cases being investigated by the ED and the CBI. Sisodia is expected to walk out of jail once necessary formalities for his release are completed, possibly by late Friday itself.

The apex court’s order would come as a major relief not just for Sisodia but also for AAP, which has been fending off multiple controversies lately, and, more importantly, for jailed Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and former Delhi minister Satyendra Jain too. Kejriwal, it may be recalled, had been granted bail by the apex court last month in the Delhi excise policy case being probed by the ED but he continues to languish in jail awaiting bail in the CBI’s case against him.

Identical cases

The cases for which Kejriwal and Jain are in prison are identical to the ones in which Sisodia has now been granted bail. As such, AAP leaders and the legal team representing the Delhi CM believe that the SC’s order in Sisodia’s matter would soon pave the way for Kejriwal and Jain’s release too.

The apex court’s verdict on Sisodia’s bail plea was rooted in the most fundamental but oft-forgotten judicial dictum on the issue of personal liberty. The court has also come down heavily not just on the delay by the ED and the CBI in completing the investigation in the excise policy cases but also pulled up the trial court and the Delhi High Court for ignoring Sisodia’s right to a speedy trial while denying him bail.

“It is the basic right of the person charged of an offence and not convicted that he be ensured and given a speedy trial... when the trial is not proceeding for reasons not attributable to the accused, the court, unless there are good reasons, would be guided to exercise the power to grant bail,” the court said.

The verdict, by Justices BR Gavai and KV Viswanathan, also noted that when it had previously denied Sisodia’s bail, it had done so relying on the assurance given by the prosecution that “they shall conclude the trial by taking appropriate steps within next 6-8 months”. The judges, however, noted that “a perusal of the material placed on record would clearly reveal that far from the trial being concluded within a period of 6-8 months, it is even yet to commence.”

‘Courts playing safe’

Noting that Sisodia had been deprived of his “sacrosanct rights” to speedy trial and liberty, something the trial court and the Delhi High Court “ought to have given due weightage to” while deciding on the AAP leader’s bail pleas, the apex court said, “over a period of time, the trial courts and the High Courts have forgotten a very well-settled principle of law that bail is not to be withheld as a punishment.”

The verdict noted further, “it appears that the trial courts and the High Courts’ attempt to play safe in matters of grant of bail. The principle that bail is a rule and refusal is an exception is, at times, followed in breach. On account of non-grant of bail even in straight forward open and shut cases, this Court is flooded with huge number of bail petitions thereby adding to the huge pendency. It is high time that the trial courts and the High Courts should recognise the principle that “bail is rule and jail is exception”.”

The court also noted that in the CBI and ED’s cases against Sisodia “493 witnesses have been named” and the matters involve “thousands of pages of documents and over a lakh pages of digitised documents”.

“It is, thus, clear that there is not even the remotest possibility of the trial being concluded in the near future. In our view, keeping the appellant behind the bars for an unlimited period of time in the hope of speedy completion of trial would deprive his fundamental right to liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. As observed time and again, the prolonged incarceration before being pronounced guilty of an offence should not be permitted to become punishment without trial,” the court held.

Bail for Kejriwal next?

Each of these observations by the top court, Kejriwal’s counsel senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, says “hold true in the matters against the Delhi CM and even Satyender Jain”. Singhvi told The Federal that Sisodia’s bail order provides “extremely clear and valid grounds” for bail to Kejriwal too and that the Delhi CM’s legal team will “take appropriate and necessary steps” very soon to secure his release from Tihar Jail.

It is true that the grant of bail merely secures Sisodia’s release from jail for now while keeping the possibility of future arrest and incarceration hanging on his head like a Damocles’ Sword. Yet, the relief from the top court comes as a major morale booster for the AAP as a party, and also for Kejriwal, as an individual.

The past few months have been marked by mounting setbacks for the Delhi CM and his party. The AAP failed, yet again, to win any of the four Lok Sabha seats it contested in Delhi despite stitching an unwieldy pre-poll pact with its once arch-rival, the Congress. The courts have continued to deny Kejriwal bail. The civic chaos in Delhi due to recurring spells of heavy rains, which have also claimed lives, has buried the AAP under criticism of administrative failures and civic mismanagement. To make matters worse, the AAP also lost its case in the Supreme Court, which had challenged the Delhi LG’s powers to nominate aldermen to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

Key poll strategist

These setbacks, compounded by an ironically united tirade against the AAP by its ally Congress’s Delhi Unit and the BJP on issues of corruption and administrative lapses in the Delhi government, have stacked up at a time when elections to the Delhi assembly are due in less than six months.

Seen as Kejriwal’s closest political aide, Sisodia, when compared to all other AAP leaders, arguably enjoys the most goodwill among Delhi voters due to his role in reforming the national capital’s government school apparatus. The mild-mannered former deputy chief minister, before he was arrested and jailed, was also among the AAP’s main electoral and policy strategists in Delhi. His release from jail in these trying times for his party would, thus, revitalise the AAP cadre and also help the outfit regroup and launch its counter-offensive against its current principal rival, the BJP.

The unambiguous assertions by the SC in Sisodia’s bail order on the long delay in completion of investigation by the ED and the CBI in the excise policy case will also be weaponised by the AAP to reassert before Delhi (and also poll-bound Haryana) voters that the AAP leadership was being framed in fake cases due to BJP’s vindictive politics.