No question of bailing out Kejriwal: Phoolka

Phoolka added that ex-servicemen will now be roped in by AAP to tackle drug menace in Punjab and the campaign will start from Ludhiana.

Senior Supreme Court advocate H S Phoolka.

Senior Supreme Court advocate H S Phoolka, who lost Lok Sabha polls as AAP candidate said that there is no question of getting bail for AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal.

“Kejriwal was summoned by the court for a normal hearing in the case. As a law abiding citizen, he went there and without issuing any warrants he was sent behind the bars. There is simply no question of getting bail for him,” said Phoolka. He added that a committee of four senior lawyers including him are moving to HC on May 26 and are trying to present the whole issue in front of court. “This practise of arresting a person without even issuing warrants is not only adding burden on whole judicial system but because of this a lot of innocent people are going behind the bars. AAP, as a party will also present this angle in front of the court,” said Phoolka. Phoolka added that ex-servicemen will now be roped in by AAP to tackle drug menace in Punjab and the campaign will start from Ludhiana.

“We have called for a workshop to be held in first week of June. A lot of NGOs, ex-servicemen and gurudwara committees have promised to help us. Our first mission to make Ludhiana drug free. It doesn’t matter if I won or lost the polls from here,” said Phoolka.

He also lashed out at Ludhiana Municipal Corporation for playing politics under cover of HC orders. “No orders say that you uproot SC/ST people from their homes without first arranging for their rehabilitation. It is clearly actions being taken under political pressure and they can even sell off the high priced land after vacating it. This is complete injustice. Poor people are settled here since years and you cannot make them homeless in one go,” said Phoolka reacting to demolition drives in Barewala Awana where MC plans to demolish around 300 encroachments belonging to SC/ST in coming days.

Divya Goyal

Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab. Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab. She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on “Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers” had won accolades at IIMC. She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012. Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab. ... Read More

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