The AAP leaders repeated their allegations that Jaitley was behind the CBI raid at Delhi Secretariat on Monday as well as “take over” of Delhi ACB from Delhi Government by the Centre to scuttle probe into DDCA affairs.
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“There is no grain of truth in the allegations. The SFIO (the Serious Fraud Investigation Office that conducted a probe when the UPA was in power)… could not find a shred of evidence against me”.
Rejecting all allegations against him, the Finance Minister said no personal allegations were ever made against him nor did he feel the need of contradicting it.
I have felt the need for stating the above in order to counter any unsubstantiated, non-specific allegations. “On my own, I told Ramlalji I am fighting against corruption in cricket bodies for the past eight years”.
Jaitley, who had earlier termed the allegations as rubbish, said he could not reply to such vague allegations and suggested that AAP was trying to deflect the issue of alleged corruption by a senior Delhi bureaucrat.
The other key figures in the DDCA were Rajeev Shukla, the current chairman of the IPL, who was the government representative in the DDCA as long Jaitley was its president. The Serious Fraud Investigation Office under the Finance Ministry probed into the complaint filed by Jaitely’s party colleague Kirti Azad and submitted a report on March 21, 2013. “Why was the Finance Minister not acted against?”
L to R: Aam Aadmi Party spokespersons Ashutosh, Raghav Chadha, Kumar Vishwas, Sanjay Singh and Deepak Bajpai during a press conference in New Delhi yesterday, during which they lashed out at Arun Jaitley.
“If the Union government were to consider using against the Delhi CM the adjectives that Mr. Kejriwal used against the PM, it would be legitimate to contend that this is not in consonance with the federal spirit”, Jaitley wrote, condemning West Bengal and Bihar chief ministers, Mamata Banerjee and Nitish Kumar respectively, for backing Kejriwal.
According to the BJP, Kejriwal first blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the CBI raids but later shifted the attack onto Jaitley, which indicated that the AAP government was seeking to divert the attention from the corruption charges against his bureaucrat.
Sisodia alleged that parliament was taken for a ride by Jaitley.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is no stranger to going after the media. Kejriwal tweeted on Tuesday.
Asking why Kejriwal should place himself as a shield in front of an official facing investigation, the finance minister said: “It is a part of propaganda technique to deflect attention when you yourself are in the dock”.
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Showering praise on Jaitley, she said he had written his name in “golden letters in history” with his dedication and work and Kejriwal’s attempts to protect a corrupt officer amounted to abdicating the anti-corruption movement from which he had shot to limelight. They alleged that funds from the DDCA were siphoned off to people and companies favored by Jaitley, during his tenure.
