The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to grant a preliminary hearing date to former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in his plea seeking to set aside the trial court’s order taking cognizance of the ED chargesheet in the money laundering case.
This means that Kejriwal’s petition will be heard by the High Court on December 20 as per schedule.
Without staying the hearing of the case against Kejriwal in the ED case in the alleged excise policy scam, the trial court will take up the next case on December 13.
Senior advocate N Hariharan, representing Kejriwal, had pressed the high court to advance the next hearing date, with Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri indicating on Friday that it was not possible due to several matters already listed.
Hariharan alternatively requested the court to direct the prosecution to serve their reply to Kejriwal in advance, after which Justice Ohri directed the ED to do the same orally.
Kejriwal is seeking to quash the trial court’s order from July 9 where it took cognizance of the seventh supplementary chargesheet filed by the ED.
Relying on a 2024 Supreme Court judgment, he argued that “summoning the accused in the supplementary charge-sheet without any fresh/additional evidence is nothing but review of the original order of summons and abuse of court process”.