Congress's Sandeep Dikshit says suspicions on Satyendar Jain were old, dismissing Kejriwal's 'crying wolf' tactic. Kejriwal alleges Amit Shah ordered the arrest. Swati Maliwal calls Kejriwal the mastermind of a 'shop of corruption'.
Sandeep Dikshit's reaction
He said, "The sewage treatment plant has been known for 7-8 years in Delhi that irregularities are occurring. New contracts are being awarded at double, triple, or quadruple the rates, and the internal specifications have been reduced. So, to say there was no suspicion is wrong; there was suspicion from the start. And this is his old, familiar tactic of saying "insiders told me."
Drawing parallels to previous major inquiries, Sandeep Dikshit added, " When a person can tell such blatant lies and then repeats the same story over and over, I don't think even Arvind Kejriwal's blind followers will believe him. It's like the "crying wolf" story; if you keep crying wolf, eventually even your own people stop believing you. So, no one takes his words seriously anymore. You can make any accusation you want. My point is, if you haven't done anything wrong, you will be acquitted in court, so what's the problem?
Summarising his perspective on the administrative inquiry and public statements, Sandeep Dixit said, "In our country, there is no punishment for failing to do work. If there were, I believe the entire Aam Aadmi Party should be in jail for failing to clean the Yamuna. The programs created in 2012-13 by the Congress government to install interceptors on the large drains flowing into the Yamuna, which account for about 80% of the pollution. were designed to intercept dirty water at various points, clean it, remove the sludge, and release clean water back into the river."
On Wednesday, the Anti-Corruption Bureau produced AAP leader and former Delhi Minister of Water, Satyendar Kumar Jain, and other accused at the Rouse Avenue Court. They have been arrested in an ACB FIR registered on 11.05.2024 under Sections 7, 7A, 9, 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (as amended in 2018) read with Sections 42, 409, 418, 120-B of the IPC.
Arvind Kejriwal blames Amit Shah
Meanwhile, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday questioned Union Home Minister Amit Shah over the arrest of former Delhi Minister Satyendar Jain by the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB), alleging that the agency was pressured to make the arrest.
In a post on X, Kejriwal said, "Amit Shah ji should explain why he got Satyendra Jain arrested by pressuring the investigation agency."
In another post, Kejriwal claimed that an ACB official had revealed that there was no plan to arrest Jain until Wednesday morning, alleging that the decision was taken after a call from Shah. "An Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) official revealed that there was no plan for the ACB to arrest Satyendra Jain until morning. Then in the afternoon, a direct call came from Amit Shah ji saying, 'Arrest him.' That's when the arrest was made."
Kejriwal further alleged that arrests were no longer being made on the basis of whether a person had committed a crime. "Clearly, now arrests don't happen based on whether someone has committed a crime or not, but rather on whom those two want to arrest."
Swati Maliwal's allegations
Earlier, BJP MP and former AAP leader Swati Maliwal on Wednesday levelled serious allegations against AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal, alleging that he ran a "shop of corruption" in Delhi for a decade and has now shifted his operations to Punjab.
Speaking to reporters, Maliwal alleged that Kejriwal deliberately avoided holding any ministry during his tenure as Delhi Chief Minister so that he could shift blame onto his ministers whenever a scam surfaced.
"In the last 10 years in Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal was running a shop of corruption. Whether it was the school classroom construction scam, the liquor scam, or countless other scams that these people orchestrated. And if we observe closely, Arvind Kejriwal operated very shrewdly," Maliwal said.
"During the 10 years he remained the Chief Minister of Delhi, he did not hold charge of a single ministry. His modus operandi is very clear: he orchestrated corruption through his ministers, and the moment a minister was exposed, he would shift the entire blame onto that minister," she said.
The ACB has arrested six persons in connection with an FIR registered on May 11, 2024, under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, as amended in 2018, along with relevant provisions related to cheating, criminal breach of trust, and criminal conspiracy. (ANI)
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Asianet Newsable English staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)