‘BJP using Mishra to crush AAP, Kejriwal won’t quit’
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday said Arvind Kejriwal will not step down as the Delhi chief minister and denied charges of corruption levelled against him by sacked minister Kapil Mishra.
Party leader Sanjay Singh said Mishra was acting at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which demanded Kejriwal’s resignation. Mishra had said he had seen health minister Satyendar Jain allegedly handing ₹2 crore to Kejriwal last week.
“Why isn’t Kapil Mishra telling us the time of visiting Arvind Kejriwal’s house? I want to ask him if Kejriwal had called him up before accepting the ‘bribe’,” Singh said at a press conference in Delhi on Monday.
Singh alleged that a big conspiracy was being hatched against AAP by the BJP through Mishra. “Leaders of BJP and Congress have been involved in a slew of scams, these parties do not have moral grounds to demand the resignation of the CM. A game of exploitation is being played against AAP by the BJP,” he said.
Mishra was removed as water and tourism minister on Saturday night over “mismanagement in water supply”. On Monday morning, he said he submitted proof against Kejriwal in the DJB water tanker scam to the anti-corruption branch (ACB).
Why isn’t Kapil Mishra telling us the time of visiting Arvind Kejriwal’s house? I want to ask him if Kejriwal had called him up before accepting the ‘bribe’.
He also said he would take up the matter with the CBI on Tuesday morning.
The party showed a letter Mishra had written on September 24 last year, in which he expressed concern about the ACB being “under pressure” from the Centre. “In this letter, Mishra himself wrote that the ACB is under pressure and is trying all means to conspire against Arvind Kejriwal. Why didn’t he then not name Kejriwal for being corrupt? So all these are baseless allegations which Mishra is levelling only because he is in shock for being removed as a minister,” Sanjay Singh added.
Singh said the BJP has been trying to implicate AAP leaders by fabricating cases only to crush opposition. He also dared the BJP-led government to use all its probe agencies--CBI, ACB, Delhi Police, ED--and get every allegation against the AAP probed.
“Investigate and throw all our leaders in jail if the agencies can prove the same. In the past, several allegations were made against AAP leaders, but all they turned to be baseless,” he said.