Team News Riveting
New Delhi, March 21
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday arrested Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal shortly after the high court refused to grant him protection from coercive action in an excise policy-linked money laundering case.
The probe agency officials went to Kejriwal’s residence to serve him a summons in the case. They informed the staff at the chief minister’s residence that it has a search warrant. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief had earlier skipped multiple summonses of the agency in the case.
Earlier in the day, a Delhi High Court bench of Justices Suresh Kumar Kait and Manoj Jain refused to grant Kejriwal any protection from coercive action in the case. The bench listed the AAP leader’s application for further consideration on April 22 when his main petition challenging the summons is fixed for hearing. It asked the ED to file its response.
Kejriwal’s arrest comes at a time when AAP is making a serious foray into electoral politics through a tie-up with its opposition INDIA bloc partner Congress for the Lok Sabha polls in Delhi, Haryana and Gujarat. The man who leaded the ‘India Against Corruption’ movement to becoming the chief minister of Delhi thrice in a row, has been arrested for committing shady deals in Delhi excise policy.
The 55-year-old IIT graduate, Kejriwal first led AAP to form the government in Delhi in 2013 with outside support from the Congress. He faced off with former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit in the New Delhi constituency and defeated her by a margin of 22,000 votes in his poll debut.
His arrest may have serious repercussions on the party’s poll fortunes since he has been at the centre of its plans and strategy for the Lok Sabha election. In his absence, the party stares at uncertainty as many of its other senior leaders are either in jail or in political obscurity.
His trusted aides — Sanjay Singh and Manish Sisodia — are in prison in connection with the excise policy case, while another trusted aide Satyendar Jain is in jail in a separate money laundering case.
