One of the day’s biggest political stories will be the Supreme Court’s ruling on the bail application of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the Delhi liquor policy case. Kejriwal has filed two petitions, one challenging the denial of bail and another against the upholding of his arrest by the CBI in the case. A Bench headed by Justice Surya Kant is set to pronounce the verdict, which was reserved on September 5. The court's cause list for Friday shows that there will be two judgments in the matter, one by Justice Kant and another by Justice Ujjal Bhuyan. Case background in short: Kejriwal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on March 21 in a money laundering case linked to the excise case. On June 26, the CBI formally arrested him in a corruption case linked to the alleged scam. The Supreme Court granted him interim bail in the money laundering case on July 12 and he is currently in judicial custody in the CBI’s corruption case. Recommended reading: What is the Delhi excise policy case, and what is the Delhi CM accused of? In context: If Kejriwal walks out of prison — AAP leaders Manish Sisodia and Vijay Nair have received bail in recent weeks in the case, as has Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader K Kavitha — it will be a major boost for the party. But he will have his task cut out, immediately steering the party through the Haryana Assembly elections. Then there is the larger goal: getting the party ready for the Assembly elections in Delhi early next year. Kejriwal also stares mounting anti-incumbency, especially after the past few months that have seen the national Capital face a water crisis and increasing civic infrastructure problems amid a governance paralysis induced by the run-ins with the office of Lieutenant-Governor V K Saxena. As Mallica Joshi noted in an article last month, “In this lasting faceoff between the two power centres, work in several departments of Delhi is at a standstill, particularly in PWD and the Delhi Jal Board. Several road redevelopment projects have not moved for several months. The Delhi Jal Board has not begun projects such as laying new sewer lines in Lajpat Nagar, or pipelines in Sangam Vihar – all of which has contributed to the monsoon chaos.” One of the matters on which the L-G has turned his focus is alleged corruption in construction activities at state government-run hospitals. On Thursday, the Leader of the Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, Vijender Gupta, met Saxena to demand a probe into the "healthcare scam" of the AAP government. He alleged that many of the 24 hospital construction projects, approved with an outlay of Rs 5,590 crore, remain incomplete, leading to a dramatic increase in costs. If Kejriwal gets bail, this may be one of the biggest lines of attacks against him in the lead-up to the polls. What next for Mamata Banerjee? She waited for the protesting junior doctors on Thursday morning but they did not turn up because the government refused to livestream the proceedings. And now West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s task gets tougher. For weeks, the state’s medical services have been hampered because of the strike by the doctors, who have refused to resume work despite the Supreme Court’s directive. How Mamata and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) respond going forward and what options the Bengal CM chooses to break the deadlock will be one of the most crucial political stories. On August 28, at a rally to mark the foundation day of the TMC students’ wing, Banerjee’s speech was seen as containing a threat to file FIRs against the protesters as she told them she did not want to resort to it as it would destroy their careers. On Thursday, she sounded more tolerant. “They are here for the chair, not justice. For the sake of the people, I am ready to resign. I do not want the chief ministership … I have been insulted, my government has been insulted … We have tolerated a lot of canards and insults for the last 33 days,” Banerjee said. Recommended reading: A month after the RG Kar incident, Kolkata is a city at the barricades Also happening today: The Congress’s “Kedarnath Pratishtha Raksha Yatra’” that was stopped midway due to a cloudburst restarted on Thursday and will conclude on Friday with a jalabhishek and puja at the Kedarnath temple. — With PTI inputs
