The CBI which filed an appeal in the Delhi High Court, challenging a special court's order discharging former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and others in the liquor-policy case, said on Monday that lower court's order acquitting Kejriwal and Sisodia is wrong. The CBI in the Delhi High Court said the excise policy case is one of the biggest scams and is a clear case of corruption.
The probe agency said the trial court passed order in favour of Kejriwal, Sisodia and others, acquitting them without trial and added that the bribe givers flew in private aircraft during the peak of Covid, even when private aircraft were not allowed.
Saying that the evidence we collected was ignoredm, the CBI said there is enough evidence against Kejriwal, Sisodia and others and witnessed support CBI case.
A Delhi court said last week said that the evidence collected by the CBI during its probe into the liquor policy failed to disclose a prima-facie case of "policy concealment, unilateralism or exclusion of the constitutional authority", while discharging former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia in the matter.
Special Judge Jitendra Singh was hearing the case against Sisodia, former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Telangana Jagruthi president K Kavitha and 20 others, who were accused in the liquor-policy case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
In a 598-page order, the court said, "The material, as it presently stands, does not disclose a prima-facie case of policy concealment, unilateralism or exclusion of the constitutional authority.
On the contrary, the record reflects a process marked by consultation, communication and administrative caution."
According to the prosecution, Sisodia had ignored the Ravi Dhawan Committee report that had cited discrepancies in the excise policy.
The court said the policy was framed to overcome the challenges faced by the earlier excise policy, including refinement of distribution margins, reflecting attempts to address monopoly tendencies and regulatory leakages under the earlier regime.
It said the policy emerged during a period marked by unprecedented fiscal strain occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic, when state revenues had suffered severe contraction owing to lockdown measures, while expenditure obligations expanded significantly to address public-health exigencies.
"The choice of an auction-based model, which ordinarily assures competitive bidding and potentially-enhanced revenue realisation, cannot be divorced from that fiscal context.
Policy formulation must be appreciated as a response to the economic realities prevailing at the relevant time," the court said.
It underlined that the prosecution did not allege that the bidding process of retail vends in Delhi was vitiated by manipulation, irregular evaluation or misconduct.
"There is no assertion that bids were unlawfully structured, that eligibility criteria were selectively relaxed or that the allocation process was procedurally compromised. The challenge is directed at the model itself, not at its implementation," the court said.
