New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party MLAs Saurabh Bhardwaj and Atishi will be bumped up to the Delhi cabinet following the resignation Tuesday of jailed ministers Manish Sisodia and Satyender Jain.
Sources told news agency ANI that Chief Minister and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal has forwarded his colleagues’ names to Lieutenant General Vinai Kumar Saxena for approval.
Kejriwal’s trusted lieutenants Sisodia and Jain, both arrested on corruption charges, resigned from the Cabinet on Tuesday.
Kejriwal accepted the resignations of the leaders, who party members say, played a pivotal role in implementing the Delhi government’s agenda of good education and health facilities.
Bhardwaj had said Tuesday: “Due to the conspiracies of the ruling BJP at Centre, two ministers of the Delhi government are in jail today. They have resigned from their posts. It is unfortunate for the country that Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain, known for their work, have been implicated in false cases by the Centre.”
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Sisodia on Sunday evening — after nine hours of interrogation – for the alleged financial irregularities in the now-scrapped liquor policy of 2021-22.
The Enforcement Directorate had arrested Jain on 30 May, 2022 in a money-laundering case, based on a CBI FIR lodged in 2017 under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Sisodia was in charge of 18 portfolios, including that of Jain’s health department.
Sisodi’a arrest and the subsequent resignations of the two minister made Opposition BJP and Congress very vocal Tuesday, with BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad calling the AAP calling it a party of “3Cs – Cut, Commission and Corruption”.
Congress leader Ajay Maken said: “All those sympathizing with Manish Sisodia must understand that this is an open and shut case of corruption. This a big liquor scam that happened in Delhi and it should be seen that way.”
Also read: Delhi L-G forwards resignation letters of Satyendar Jain, Manish Sisodia to President