4 min readFeb 27, 2026 06:04 PM IST
First published on: Feb 27, 2026 at 06:04 PM IST
Arvind Kejriwal and his team can now sleep well. They can go to the people and say that he is anything but corrupt. It is not a coincidence or theatrics that Kejriwal broke down before the media after the court verdict exonerating him. He had emerged as a shining star in Indian politics because of his crusade against corruption. He was a product of the Anna movement, a revolt against the political establishment perceived as highly corrupt. But the Modi government tried to destroy Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party by turning the sword of corruption against them. The results of the Delhi elections show that, in a large measure, the BJP did succeed in painting them as corrupt.
But that does not mean that Kejriwal has not inherited the sins of politics-as-usual. The verdict on the liquor scam is a God-sent opportunity to take corrective measures and reset the party. The AAP had emerged as a beacon of hope and as a revolt. Tragically, those who wanted to change the system ended up absorbed by it.
It is the same system that conspired against Kejriwal. In the last few years, the system has become so brazen and ruthless that it has thrown away whatever semblance of morality it once had. Now, politics is a race for power in its crudest form. Winning elections is everything; it does not matter how they are won. Arvind Kejriwal was the biggest thorn for the BJP and Modi. Kejriwal and the AAP gave Modi the biggest defeat of his political career. Despite Modi’s phenomenal popularity, the BJP could win only three seats in the 2015 assembly election and again only eight out of 70 in 2020. The 2025 election was revenge for those defeats. The AAP lost its bastion, Delhi. The BJP used corruption, an issue that made Kejriwal’s political career, against him. For this, the “liquor scam” and “sheesh mahal” proved to be more than handy.
But if the court’s verdict has proved Kejriwal innocent and gives him an opportunity to project himself as a victim, it also exposes the BJP and the Modi government.
The chargesheet filed by the CBI could not withstand the scrutiny of the court. The CBI could not present a single credible witness or piece of evidence to convince the court that the matter should be tried. Let’s remember that the chargesheet was so frivolous that the court refused to frame charges against the accused.
This was the same CBI that had arrested a sitting chief minister just before the parliamentary elections. The BJP wove a grand narrative that Kejriwal was the “biggest fraud” on Earth. I refuse to believe that CBI officers did not know that the case would not withstand the scrutiny of the court. They knew, but they were bound not by their commitment to the rule of law or to the Constitution, but to their loyalty to the political masters. And now CBI has to pay the price.
The court has wondered if departmental action against officers responsible for the case would follow.
I don’t know how much dividend Kejriwal will get from this verdict. What is clear is that the entire Opposition has a solid, believable argument that the Modi government is unconstitutionally using central agencies to target the Opposition for its political benefit. The Kejriwal case is an issue on which the entire opposition should unite and present their case to the people. They should lodge a criminal case against the CBI to deter officers and agencies from targeting opposition leaders with fake or frivolous cases.
This is also an opportunity for Kejriwal to reinvent himself as a leader, and to renew the AAP as a harbinger of moral politics. Will it happen? I am not sure. The Kejriwal I used to know would certainly have seized the moment, but I know very little of this Kejriwal. Therefore, I will keep my fingers crossed.
The writer is co-founder of SatyaHindi and author of Reclaiming Bharat
