Delhi Riots | Is AAP Correct In Rejecting Delhi Police’s Lawyers?

AAP argues they have made a principled decision, but ASG Aman Lekhi objects to the imputations against the lawyers.

On Tuesday, 28 July, Arvind Kejriwal’s Delhi Government escalated its ongoing battle with the Lieutenant Governor and the Delhi Police over the appointment of lawyers for the Delhi riots cases.

The Delhi Cabinet rejected a panel of lawyers proposed by the Delhi Police to act as special counsels in the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court, including Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and Additional Solicitor General Aman Lekhi.

Observing that courts had raised “serious questions on fairness of investigations” done by the Delhi Police, something The Quint has tracked and can be read here, the Cabinet observed that, “a free and fair trial of these cases would not be possible by a panel of lawyers selected by the Delhi Police itself.”

As reported last week, the Aam Aadmi Party has adopted an aggressive new stance on the violence which rocked northeast Delhi in February 2020, arguing that the violence was “engineered” by the BJP, and that the ruling party at the Centre was trying to get its favoured lawyers appointed in the riots cases through the L-G to obfuscate the BJP’s involvement.