All Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs in Delhi on Monday urged party chief Arvind Kejriwal to continue as the Delhi Chief Minister even if he is arrested, the party said in a statement.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had summoned Mr. Kejriwal for questioning on November 2 in connection with the excise policy case, in which former Deputy CM Manish Sisodia and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh are already in judicial custody. The AAP chief did not appear before the ED. He wrote to the probe agency, terming the summons to him “unsustainable in law” and “motivated”.
Party leaders have since voiced apprehension about the arrest of their party chief.
On Monday, the MLAs expressed their support for Mr. Kejriwal at a meeting chaired by him.
Delhi BJP Secretary Harish Khurana termed the show of solidarity by the AAP MLAs a “political melodrama”.
“Each MLA told Arvindji with folded hands that ‘no matter what happens, even if you are sent to police custody or judicial custody, you must continue to run the Delhi government’,” senior party leader and Delhi Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj said.
“The mandate was for him. We went to each street in the city and sought votes in his name. This is why we told him that ‘even as the Prime Minister wants you to resign, you must continue as the CM’,” he said.
Mr. Bharadwaj said he, along with all his Cabinet colleagues, was prepared to work from jail.
“The atmosphere is such that, very soon, we will all be sent to jail. Atishi could be in jail number 2; I might be in jail number 1. Still, we will get together for Cabinet meetings and take decisions, which will be implemented by the MLAs outside the jail,” he said.
“Ever since the Supreme Court, while rejecting the bail application of Manish Sisodia, observed that a money trail of ₹338 crore appeared to have been established, everyone in AAP, including Kejriwal, has been saying that the CM’s arrest is imminent, despite the fact that no investigating agency has said as much,” the BJP said in a statement.
The ED case is based on an FIR 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 this year. He had said that the entire case was “fabricated” and a result of “dirty politics”.
