New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is set to issue fresh summons to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal after he refused to appear before it in the ongoing probe into the 2021-22 Delhi excise policy, ThePrint has learnt through sources in the agency.
This will be the fourth summons to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief, who has so far skipped appearing before investigating officers to record his statement, questioning the legality of the last three.
In its last summons, the ED had asked Kejriwal to appear before it Wednesday. On Thursday, the Delhi CM held a press conference to present his reasons as to why he hasn’t showed up at the agency’s headquarters so far.
Calling the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and ED probes in the excise police case fake, Kejriwal dismissed the conversations around a “liquor scam” in Delhi. He asked why the agencies had found no evidence despite two years of investigation and arrests of several of his aides.
“If corruption actually took place, where did the crores of rupees go? Did they vanish in the air?” he asked at the four minutes-long press conference.
“They have arrested multiple leaders of AAP in this fake case and have not found any evidence against them and now they are hell bent on arresting me. Honesty is my biggest strength and they want to destroy my honest image by sending me summons,” the Delhi CM said.
Kejriwal further said that his lawyers have clarified to him that these summons are illegal. “I have explained in great detail why the summons are illegal. They (ED) are yet to respond to my questions which means that they don’t have any explanation to my allegations and conceded that their summons are illegal. Should I follow illegal summons? If there will be a legal summon, I will honour it,” he added.
The AAP chief further alleged that the BJP does not want to probe the case but rather wants to stop him from campaigning. “They have sent me summons right before the Lok Sabha Elections. The CBI had called me eight months back and I had deposed before them, answered all their questions. Now asking me to appear just two months before the general elections is a way to call and arrest me to stop me from campaigning.”
Further attacking the BJP, he said that the party “is not arresting corrupt people but brazenly misusing ED and CBI to dismantle other parties and include their leaders”.
“Politicians who join their party are let off but people like Manish Sisodia, Vijay Nair and Sanjay Singh are behind bars because they refused to join their party,” Kejriwal added.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)