Whether former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was legally correct in asking Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma of the Delhi High Court to recuse herself from the Delhi Excise Policy case is a matter of legal debate, involving a conflict between established procedural norms and the principles of natural justice. In Indian law, there is no codified statute governing recusal; it is primarily guided by Supreme Court precedents, which emphasise that recusal is a matter of judicial discretion and conscience. Kejriwal argued that a "reasonable apprehension" of bias existed, which is a valid legal ground for seeking recusal (based on Ranjit Thakur v. Union of India 1987), as justice must not only be done but must appear to be done.

In Ranjit Thakur (supra), the Supreme Court was adjudicating on a court-martial order in which it ruled that military court-martial proceedings must adhere to principles of natural justice and fairness. The court established that punishments must be proportional to the offence, holding that a sentence "strikingly disproportionate" to the misconduct constitutes an arbitrary, unreasonable action violating Article 14. The court held that a punishment that shocks the conscience of the court justifies judicial review. In this case, sentencing a soldier to a year of rigorous imprisonment and dismissal for refusing to eat (as a protest) was considered highly excessive even by the peremptory standards of court martial trials. The judgement emphasised........

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