The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is also the Aam Aadmi Party’s national convener, for recording his statement on November 2 in connection with the Delhi excise policy case.
The ED case is based on a First Information Report registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) alleging multiple irregularities in the formulation and implementation of the Delhi excise policy (2021-22) which was scrapped following corruption allegations.
The CBI had recorded Mr. Kejriwal’s statement on April 16 and after being questioned for over nine hours, he had told the media persons that the entire case was fabricated, and the agencies did not have any proof and that it was a result of “dirty politics”. He had alleged that the entire case was being built to bring down the AAP.
Two senior AAP leaders — Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh — are already in jail as undertrials in the same case. Mr. Sisodia, who was the then Delhi Deputy Chief Minister, was arrested by the CBI on February 26 following several rounds of questioning and on October 5, the ED arrested Mr. Singh, who is a Rajya Sabha member, following several hours of questioning.
On Monday, responding to the ED’s summons, senior party leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said, “The Central government has only one intention — to end the AAP by any means. For this they are leaving no stone unturned and they want to put Mr. Kejriwal in jail by any means and end the AAP.”
Senior party leader Atishi said the BJP was scared of the AAP and the good work happening in Delhi and Punjab and that was why it wanted to put AAP leaders in jail under false cases and end the party. “As part of this conspiracy, Kejriwal has been summoned on November 2 by the ED. The ED wants to arrest him under a false case. I want to tell the BJP, we are not scared of going to jail or their false cases. We will continue to work for the people,” Ms. Atishi said.
Meanwhile, celebrating Mr. Kejriwal being summoned by the ED, Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva termed it the day of victory of truth and said Delhi would finally get freedom from Mr. Kejriwal’s corrupt regime.
“Today when the Supreme Court rejected Mr. Sisodia’s bail it vindicated the BJP’s allegations of liquor scam and the ED summons to Mr. Kejriwal is the final step to take the corruption saga to its conclusion with the Kejriwal team landing in jail,” he added.
Undue favours
The case alleges deliberate irregularities in the framing and implementation of the excise policy and undue favours extended to the licensees in the form of waiver/reduction in the licence fee, extension of L-1 licences without approval, etc.
According to the ED, the erstwhile policy had extended an extraordinarily high 12% profit margin for wholesalers and almost 185% profit margin for the retailers. The beneficiaries were allowed to profiteer through cartelisation.
The then AAP communication and media in-charge, Vijay Nair, on behalf of the party leaders, had received about ₹100 crore in advance from a “South group”, the ED said. The ED has quantified the alleged “proceeds of crime” in the case to be at least ₹1,934 crore.
