Kejriwal to appear before ED today; AAP says he’ll be first INDIA leader to be arrested

Six months after he was questioned for nearly nine hours by the CBI in the alleged excise policy scam, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is scheduled to appear before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a related case on Thursday (November 2).

The ED has summoned Kejriwal for questioning in a money-laundering case linked to the alleged excise policy scam.

The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) remained tight-lipped about whether the chief minister will appear before the ED or not. However, on Wednesday, it alleged that Kejriwal would be the first to be arrested as part of the BJP’s plan to target top INDIA alliance leaders ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

“95% cases against Opposition leaders”

At a press conference, AAP leader Raghav Chadha claimed that since 2014, 95 per cent of cases registered by the investigative agencies have been against Opposition leaders.

“Now after the formation of the INDIA alliance, the BJP is rattled. We have learnt from sources that they have hatched a plan to target top leaders from the INDIA alliance. The first arrest in this plan will be of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal,” he said.

“The BJP knows it is losing all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. It is planning to get Kejriwal arrested so that AAP is not able to contest the polls,” Chadha added.

The AAP leader also shared a list of those it claimed would be targeted by the investigative agencies.

“After Kejriwal, they will arrest Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and then Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar Tejashwi Yadav and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee. After these leaders, they will target Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin and then top leaders of the Shiv Sena and the NCP in Maharashtra,” he alleged.

There was no immediate reaction from the BJP on Chadha’s allegations.

Chadha said people vote for leaders like Kejriwal in Delhi, Tejashwi in Bihar, Mamata in West Bengal, Soren in Jharkhand, Vijayan in Kerala, K Chandrashekar Rao in Telangana, Stalin in Tamil Nadu, and Uddhav Thackeray in Maharashtra.

“Between 2014 and 2022, out of the total cases filed against leaders by agencies such as the ED and CBI, 95 per cent are against opponents of the BJP. During this time, cases have been registered against a total of 125 prominent leaders, with nearly 118 being leaders of opposition parties,” he said.

Leaders such as Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh, Sanjay Raut, P Chidambaram, Farooq Abdullah, Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik have faced these cases.

“These cases have been pursued in a way that when the elections approach and the political landscape changes, they can summon these leaders. If these leaders still do not cooperate, they could be arrested and put in jail. The formation of the INDIA alliance during this time is a significant political development,” he noted.

Delhi excise policy case

Former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia was arrested by the CBI in the Delhi excise policy case in February. The ED arrested Sisodia in a money-laundering case stemming from the CBI FIR on March 9 after questioning him in Tihar jail.

His bail plea was rejected by the Supreme Court earlier this week.

After his questioning by the CBI in April in the alleged liquor scam, during which he was asked about 56 questions, Kejriwal had termed the entire case “fabricated” and an attempt to finish the AAP.

The CBI and the ED are probing the Delhi government’s now-scrapped excise policy for 2021-22 that allegedly favoured certain liquor dealers, an allegation that the AAP has strongly denied. Based on a report of the chief secretary of Delhi government, Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena recommended a CBI probe in July last year into alleged irregularities in the formulation and implementation of the policy.

The report cited various alleged irregularities, including a waiver of Rs 144 crore to the retail licensees under the policy in the name of COVID-19-impacted sales and a refund of Rs 30 crore to a successful bidder for airport zone who failed to obtain a no-objection certificate for opening liquor stores there, officials said.

Another allegation was that the commission of wholesale licensees was raised from 5 to 12 per cent in an instance of “quid pro quo”, they added.

(With agency inputs)