New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Delhi minister Atishi today slammed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids on party members' homes, and accused the BJP-led Centre of trying to "scare and silence" the party using probe agencies.
The ED searched premises of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's personal assistant Bibhav Kumar and others as part of a probe into charges that bribes generated from "irregularities" in the DJB tendering process were routed as election funds to the AAP.
"Yesterday, I posted on Twitter about doing a big expose on the ED today. In response, to threaten AAP and silence the party, the ED has been raiding the residences of people related to the Aam Aadmi Party since 7 am today," Atishi said.
"This is the way the BJP is trying to threaten the AAP and intimidate its leaders to suppress their voices. I would like to tell the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and their agencies that AAP is not scared of their threats," she said.
Atishi claimed that despite an investigation of two years, ED has not been able to recover anything.
"For the past two years, AAP leaders have been threatened like this. In the name of 'liquor scam', investigating agencies CBI and ED have been raiding AAP leaders now and then in Delhi. But despite such investigations for nearly two years, ED has not been able to find anything," she said.
She recalled how many accused, witnesses, and government witnesses have come forward and told that they were pressured to record their statements.
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BJP's Sharp Attack On AAP
Union Minister and BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi launched a sharp attack on the AAP and Mr Kejriwal, ramping up the bitter spat between the two parties over alleged corruption in the city's liquor excise policy and the water development authority.
An apoplectic Ms Lekhi held Prime Minister Narendra Modi up as an ideal for Mr Kejriwal to follow, declaring PM Modi had (when he was Gujarat Chief Minister) "sat for 12 hours answering questions"; the reference was to PM Modi being questioned by a special team investigating the 2002 Gujarat riots.
"That is how you face... instead of drama and corruption like Kejriwal," Ms Lekhi thundered.
The Union Minister's attack comes amid the tug-of-war between the Delhi Chief Minister and his AAP and the Enforcement Directorate, which has summoned Mr Kejriwal five times for questioning in the liquor policy case. Mr Kejriwal has skipped all five and could now be arrested by the central agency.
Ms Lekhi also slammed alleged corruption and money laundering in the Delhi Jal Board, over which two people - a retired chief engineer and a contractor - were arrested last week. In addition, three senior AAP leaders have also been arrested, in connection with various cases - former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, former Health Minister Satyendra Jain, and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh.
"Delhi's governance model is on ventilator... excise policy is biggest scam one can think of (and now) while Chief Minister is avoiding answering ED summons, another scam came to the front," she said.
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"And yesterday the Delhi High Court found a false affidavit was filed... it contains some remarks regarding procurement processes. Where the audit report found central procurement processes are violative of law, and drugs procured are substandard, and also not adhering to regulations..."
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